Launched in 2002 and restarted in 2013, the Oriental Cultural Research Program is an international exchange program that aims to promote understanding of Chinese culture, history and society by sponsoring foreign translation and publication of Chinese books and inviting foreign Sinologists to conduct academic exchanges in China.

From 2013 to 2017, the program has funded Sinologists from 22 countries as well as 41 books on Chinese culture from foreign publishing houses, promoting the development of Sinology and Chinese studies abroad. It has also invited many foreign Sinologists, including Hasna Jasimuddain Moundud, Wilt L. Idema and Leonard Blussé, to conduct cultural exchanges. From Oct 25 to 31, 2017, CICA held the first "Exchange Seminar of Chinese and Foreign Scholars on Historical and Cultural Comparison Between the Rhine River and the Yangtze River" in Shanghai and other places, cooperating with the China Cultural Media Group Co Ltd and Fudan University. Fourteen top scholars from Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the United States and Hong Kong who specialized in history and culture along the Rhine River, as well as 15 Chinese scholars specialized in research on history and culture along the Yangtze River, participated in the activity and made a field survey of cultural resources in the Yangtze River Delta region.