Cross-cultural communication （37）　

37） China's foremost expert in cross-cultural communication
On March 26th 2015, the British financial newspaper Financial Times published an article revealing the inside story of how China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) managed to attract a landslide of participating countries.

The catalyst for this landslide victory was the announcement of the UK's participation, which is the US's strongest ally and is firmly opposed to the AIIB. Inspired by the UK's participation, European countries such as Germany, France and Italy also announced their participation.

The man who is thought to be the mastermind behind the Chinese side of these negotiations is a man called Jin Liqun. Jin is an urbane and sophisticated man who has also served as the former Vice President of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and he speaks perfect English and a reasonable amount of French. To quote the words of several people who have had experience negotiating with him, he is a Chinese who is the best at dealing with foreigners. He is said to quote Shakespeare to the British, talk about how he is fascinated by French culture to the French, and praise the Germans for their integrity to win them over.

The Chinese government chose the perfect person for the job, and even the Chinese people involved were surprised at the great success of this persuasion campaign. This shows just how outstanding his abilities in this field were. The most notable of these abilities was his cross-rcultural communication skills, which is the subject of this blog. From here, I will talk about my own imagination.

I think that Mr. Jin had a good command of languages and negotiation skills from his time at the Asian Development Bank. However, the ADB is an organization that works for the interests of Western countries, centered on the US and Japan. No matter how high he rose in the ADB (he actually became Vice President), he must have been aware that the organization itself was led by the West, and that there was not much that would benefit China. After that, China's economic power grew at an astonishing rate, and this led to the establishment of the AIIB, which is led by China. Jin probably played a central role in this process. He was probably well aware of his own abilities and role, and when it came to the launch of the AIIB, he probably focused on playing the role of a go-between for the US allies in Europe, rather than taking the lead. He must have used his cross-cultural communication skills to simulate hundreds of times how to win over each country, and this is probably how he achieved the results he did this time.

In this way, in today's global society, cross-cultural communication skills are not just a hobbyist's ability, but a skill that is related to the survival of a country. (Is that a bit too much of a sweeping generalization?)
To all the readers of this blog, please continue to develop your own expertise while at the same time honing your cross-cultural communication skills.

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