Advances in transportation and telecommuncation technology have linked a large part of North American society with those of Asia and the Pacific Region. The resulting increase in internation, intercultural and interlingual relationships has created a need for professional competence in context-sensitive international communication. Awareness of the need has grown in business, government and education circles. Strategies for addressing this challenge must follow the growing awareness of its existence.

A major step in addressing this need is the establishment in British Columbia, Canada of a teaching, training, service and research centre with a high-profile focus on interdisciplinary, international, intercultural and interlingual cooperation and communcation at Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre in downtown Vancouver. Several types of programs are offered.

PROGRAMS

East Asian Culture and Communication Programs

Activities in Chinese and Japanese Culture and Communication are varied and diverse, including public lectures, exhibitions, performances, non-credit courses, seminars and workshops on East Asian culture and communication for Canadians, and on Canadian culture and communication for people from East-Asia. Through the Canada Program in East Asian Languages and Cross-Cultural Communication, the Centre offers immersion, intensive and non-intensive courses in Japanese, Indonesian, Mandarin Chinese, Cantanese and Korean languages and cross-cultural communication. Teaching methodology emphasizes an audiovisual, interactive, context-sensitive, situational approach with special attention paid to the social and business dynamics of the chosen society. This program addresses the communication needs of business and professional people, diplomats, teachers and trainees who expect to work regularly or for extended periods in Asia or with Asians in Canada.

Pacific Region Forum on Business and Management Communication

Drawing upon academic, business and government resources, this forum provides an ongoing arena for the periodic reporting, analyzing, discussing and debating of new and old strategies for articulating relationships within and between business and their environments around the Pacific Region, but with an emphasis on North America and East and Southeast Asia. Attention is paid to the requirement for consonance and compatibility between corporate and social relationships and cultural values, East and West, but the general purpose of the forum is to draw attention to case studies that illustrate improved communication by drawing upon strengths of various formal and informal articulation strategies and practices around the Pacific Region. Forum Reports are edit and published by the Centre.

International Communication Research and Development Projects

Several types of research and development activities are undertaken by or throught the David See-Chai Lam Centre for International Communication. Currently they include: delivery of the Asia Pacific Curriculum Resources Database, presented in cooperation with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, offering on-line access to reviews of hundreds of books, videotapes and other teaching materials for focusing on the Asia Pacific Region; Japanese and Chinese exercises on computer, developing computerized methods for easier and more efficient learning of Chinese and Japanese languages and communication; and development of e-mail access to databses of information on the Pacific Ragion.

China Council - Environment and Development

A growing recognition of the importance of environmental issues led to a Chinese Government decision to establish the China Council for Internation Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) in 1992. The Council is composed of approximately twenty senior Chinese members and an equal number of senior interntational members. It has established a Secretariat and expert working groups to support the operations of the Council. This decision coincided with recent attempts by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to support the efforts of China in this critical field. CIDA therefore undertook a five-year CCICED project and designated the Lam Centre as the Canadian Executing Agency. The goal of the CCICED Project is to assist China in developing intergrated, coherent policies that recognize the critical linkages between environment of sustainability and economic and social development.