According to statistics released in May 2006 by the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China (MCA), by the end of 2005 there are totally 320,000 social organizations in China, marks an increase of 10.7% when compared with the previous year.

It is reported that the areas that the organizations cover include education and culture, science and technology, health and sports, environmental protection and agricultural development, charity and community development. But how many organizations are working in each of these areas is not available in the statistics. However, in an earlier unpublished research paper (in mid-2005) by an university it is reported that there are 44.63% on social services, 42.5% on research and survey, 39.9% are trade associations, 34.62% on culture and arts, 24.5 on legal aid, 21.8% on development and policy consulting, and 20.9% on poverty alleviation¹. It is interesting to notice that many of the organization involving themselves in education.

By the same statistics from MCA, among the overall 320,000 organizations, there are 171,000 non-government organizations (people’s organization); 148,000 “privately-owned non-enterprise institutions”², and 975 foundations. And, there are more than 1,600 organizations working at the national level or in the cross-provinces pattern, more than 20,000 working within certain provinces, i.e. at the provincial level, and over 50,000 organizations at county level. Among all the organizations, there are more than 50,000 Professional organizations, over 40,000 academic associations, around 53,000 trade association, and more than 23,000 federations.

1. The figure does not add up as 100%, since some organizations are active in several areas. [↩]
2. A category when you register with the registration authority. [↩]

Cross-cultural communication (also frequently referred to as intercultural communication) is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds endeavour to communicate. Cross-cultural communication tries to bring together such relatively unrelated areas as cultural anthropology and established areas of communication. Its core is to establish and understand how people from different cultures communicate with each other. Its charge is to also produce some guidelines with which people from different cultures can better communicate with each other.

The main theories for cross-cultural communication are based on the work done looking at value differences (or Cultural dimensions) among cultures, especially the works of Edward T. Hall, Geert Hofstede, Harry C. Triandis, Fons Trompenaars and more recently Shalom Schwartz. Clifford Geertz was also a major contributor to this field. The first Ph.D. called intercultural communication was awarded to William J. Starosta (Indiana University, 1973).

These theories have been applied to a variety of different communication theories and settings, most notably general business and management (Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner ) and marketing (Marieke de Mooij, Stephan Dahl). There have also been several successful educational projects which concentrate on the practical applications of these theories in cross-cultural situations. Notably the European-funded research project media-net-works which illustrates ways in which virtual communities can be established to achieve an understanding of how people from different cultures communicate with each other.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

[ intercultural ] Cross-cultural communication (also frequently referred to as intercultural communication) is a field of study that looks at how people from …  This definition of [ intercultural ] is from Google.