A report on Yahoo News saying that an online survey conducted by Kwintessential suggests that “intercultural skills would have helped troops in Iraq”. Entitled Military needs Intercultural Skills, the report emphasizes that

Intercultural skills are of importance to anyone working internationally, whether it is government, business or military personnel. Demand for intercultural communication skills are increasing as globalization continues and organizations start to realize that there are barriers and limitations to what people can do when entering a foreign territory. Intercultural communication training, skills and knowledge essentially help people understand one another better to avoid confusion and misunderstandings.

According to the report, intercultural skills means:

Having intercultural skills means one possesses the ability to successfully communicate with people from other cultures. Such a person captures and understands, in interaction with people from foreign cultures, their specific concepts in perception, thinking, feeling and acting. They appreciate how to mould their behaviour and communication style; they appreciate different approaches to life whether it is punctuality or the processing of information. In essence they are able to work effectively out of their cultural comfort-zone.

The newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is in fact the first ever foreign state leader who is able to speak fluent Chinese Mandarin i.e. Putonghua. Above is a video clip (via YouTube) showing him in an interview by CCTV before elected.

[ Mandarin ] shrub or small tree having flattened globose fruit with very sweet aromatic pulp and thin yellow-orange to flame-orange rind that is loose and …a member of an elite intellectual or cultural group any high government official or bureaucrat a high public official of imperial China a somewhat flat reddish-orange loose skinned citrus of China the dialect of Chinese spoken in Beijing and adopted as the official language for all of China  This definition of [ Mandarin ] is from Google.