The Intercultural Communication Institute (ICI) is research unit, under the direct jurisdiction of the Foreign Languages College, Ocean University of China, with the mission of fostering the cross-cultural awareness and the appreciation of cultural differences in both international and domestic arenas.

With the belief that intercultural communication, a form of communication that aims to share information across different cultures and to describe the wide range of communication processes and problems that naturally appear within the social contexts from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds, ICI seeks to understand how people from different countries and cultures act, communicate and perceive the world around them and how individuals encode messages, what medium they choose for transmitting them, and the way messages are interpreted.

With regard to intercultural communication proper, ICI studies situations where people from different cultural backgrounds interact. Aside from language, it focuses on social attributes, thought patterns, and the cultures of different groups of people. It also aims to understand the different cultures, languages and customs of people from other countries. It plays a very important role in the cross-cultural studies in social sciences such as business, cultural studies, marine cultural studies, linguistics, tourism study and communication studies. As the base for international businesses, it can provide cross-cultural service to assist with the development of intercultural communication skills. It can also offers professional development opportunities for people working in education, training, business, and management, in both international and domestic intercultural contexts.