Abstract: The research is devoted to the main genres of business letter that are used at the initial stage of consummation of a deal, these are the advertising letter that promotes products on the market, commercial inquiry and commercial offer of goods or services. The author of the article describes communicative strategies of the aforesaid kinds of business letters aimed at achieving a certain pragmatic effect, i.e. certain communicative impact on a recipient. The author also defines the main intentions in business letters, these are the author's intention to transmit a subjective meaning that is represented by performatory predicates. Analysis of the most frequently used lexical units from the linguistic corpus of 150 non-commercial letters addressed to a foreign recipient allows to define most frequently used language formulas used by Chinese speakers in modern business practice. Strategies of business letters are aimed at achieving the best efficiency of communication which success is defined by the determination of a communicative goal in the shortest time possible (in order to encourage a recipient to act, i.e. provide necessary information, buy a product or use a service. The results of the research conform to the rules of foreign business correspondence with China.