The article is devoted to the semantic analysis of the phenomenon «silence» that represents in the Russian and Chinese phraseology. The objective of research is to perform comparative functional-semantic analysis of phraseological units of Russian and Chinese languages, describing the phenomenon «silence». The relevance of this research dues to the need for linguistic and cultural understanding of national phraseological picture of the world. Material for the research is based on Russian and Chinese phraseological units extracted by the method of continuous sampling from phraseological dictionaries. The study used the methods of semantic, linguistic and cultural analysis, comparative method. The identified and described main functions of silence: virtue and politeness, expression of wisdom, communication strategy, internal energy, etc. Phraseological units with the meaning of silence contain recommendations of communicative behavior of the two peoples. Through the phenomenon «silence» in phraseology transmit cultural values, that have characteristic of the wordview and national traditions of the two ethnic groups. In Chinese phraseological picture of the world, silence has only positive assessment, while in Russian phraseological picture of the world silence is ambivalent.