Thanks to the opening and reforming policy, the whole world has witnessed the rapid Chinese economic growth during the past three decades. Meanwhile, China's entry into World Trade Organization has placed itself among the major international business players. Furthermore, China has won the applause and reputation because of holding an impressive and successful summer Olympic Games in Beijing. Apart from that, 2010 World Expo will be also held in Shanghai, China. The facts mentioned above not only exhibit China's enhancing national strength, but also demonstrate that a country which confines itself without external communication can hardly develop in today's international environment.
Admittedly, the trend of globalization endows people with more opportunities of active participation and severe competition in the global market as well as poses the challenges of how to promote mutual understanding in intercultural communication. Therefore, the way to cope with the cultural diversity is not just to ignore or deny it, but to learn about the differences so they cannot impair the intercultural communication and diminish the chances for business success.
Given the globalization, intercultural communication is attracting worldwide attention today. It seems to me that intercultural communication is a common daily phenomenon. It occurs everywhere in the world. When you watch a western movie or talk with a foreigner, or read an English novel, you are engaged in intercultural communication.
In the field of economy, business communication is currently a sort of intercultural communication. There is no doubt that the increasing openness to the global economic environment can bring Chinese people more opportunities to communicate with their foreign counterparts as well as many misunderstandings and conflicts caused by the intercultural communication. So far, more and more international business people have found that they are working in an intercultural environment and come to realize that the cultural impact and possible negative consequences that come from the inappropriate communication during the intercultural communication. Thus, the rapid globalizing trend has strongly demanded people to acquire the intercultural communication skills in order to build and promote a successful and stable business relationship. When it comes to the intercultural communication skills, they belong to the cultural competency which is the ability to understand behavior from the standpoint of the members of a culture and to behave in a way that would be understood by the members of the culture in the intended way. Due to its importance, no wonder that Su Tzu, the Chinese martial philosopher, had once said that: "Know thyself, know thine enemies: one hundred battles; one hundred victories."
