Prologue Survival of the Fittest

Since China’ s reform and opening-up some 30 years ago, many overseas companies have entered into Chinese market to look for business and investment opportunities. When the Chinese market has been growing in its importance, more and more overseas companies set up their regional offices in China and send their employees, the expatriates, to stay and live in China. The interaction and cultural exchanges between foreigners and Chinese have then been greatly increasing.

The growth in interaction and cultural exchanges further increases because of a more recent outward movement of Chinese companies and Chinese people to overseas countries for the same purposes.

The differences in culture, if not handled carefully, may lead to misunderstandings, conflicts and even possible disasters. It is particularly important for those people, who have plans or intentions to move to a foreign country, either because of emigration or as expatriates, to　understand the importance of differences in culture and the possible means to cope with the differences.

Based on my own academic exposure and experience, I would like to share with the readers my thought on Cultural Differences. I hope the readers will find the sharing useful for them to understand more about cultural differences, and can help those people who need to handle cultural differences more easily to tackle with the challenges. Under the impact of globalization, international cooperation becomes more frequent nowadays. To certain extent, sometimes cultural differences among nations have created barriers which cause obstruction to the smooth operation of international cooperation. The objective of this book is to assist in overcoming the barriers arising from cultural differences, so that the ultimate goal of international cooperation can be achieved more easily and effectively, no matter the cooperation is among nations, enterprises, international organizations or just among peoples.