Recent research has documented silence/reticence among East-Asian international students, including Chinese students, in Western/English classrooms. Students' communication competence and cultural differences from the mainstream Euro-American society have been identified as two primary barriers to participation. Placing emphasis on individual characteristics of Chinese students, however, without considering aspects of the educational context with which those characteristics interact, may over-simplify and distort the mechanism underlying their silence in the classroom. Based on a qualitative study of Chinese students' experience of sharing "indigenous knowledge" in classroom settings of Canadian academic institutions, it is argued that the pursuit of diversity in the classroom may be compromised by classroom interactions, through which, for instance, the dynamics and quality of the "knowledge exchange" of students from different socio-cultural backgrounds may be adversely affected. Within this conceptual framework, the concepts "silence", "culture difference" and "indigenous knowledge" are re-examined; the concepts "reciprocal cultural familiarity" and "inclusive knowledge sharing" are advocated. (Contains 4 notes.)