Intercultural Communication, which was introduced to Chinese Mainland in the early 1980s by a group of language teachers, is a newly founded and developing academic discipline. Over the past 30 years, it has experienced a remarkable development in various fields, exerting great impacts on other disciplines and involving more and more scholars from very different academic backgrounds: linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, management researchers and so forth. As new theories, textbooks, monographs and other academic publications have been translated and imported, local scholars have conducted researches with Chinese characteristics in different ways, in order to build ours own theory models, explain cultural phenomena concerning China and solve our own problems. While renewing the knowledge of multiple disciplines and broadening scholars' horizons, intercultural communication studies themselves have also been greatly enriched and increased, thanks to the active participation of researchers from different sectors and disciplines. Like any other young discipline, it is still inevitably facing numerous problems and obstacles which stand in its way of progress. In this essay, we review the development of this new branch of science in the last 3 decades in Chinese Mainland. A very brief history is provided and divided into 3 stages. We introduce the main research fields, their methodologies and most important achievements, analyzing their limitation and insufficiency. While mentioning the work of the leading researchers, we discuss the possibilities and ways to overcome the existing difficulties.
