Canadian Social Science

Education of International Students in Soft Cultural Power Promotion

WANG Xiuhua[a],*

[a] College of Humanities and Law, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China.

*Corresponding author.

Supported by Ministry of Education, China. This thesis is one of the part of the key project of Ministry of Education, China (JZZ-11-8) in 2011.

Received 1 August 2012; accepted 14 October 2012

Abstract

Soft culture power promotion has deeply affected the education of international students. Soft cultural Power can utilize the advantages of education of international students studying in China to promote rapidly, to develop vigorously and to spread internationally. The education of international students in soft culture power promotion has made Chinese brilliant culture benefit all human beings and world peace.

Key words: soft cultural power; international students; higher-education; internationalization; international students studying in China

WANG Xiuhua (2012). Education of International Students in Soft Cultural Power Promotion . Canadian Social Science, 8(5), 192-195. Available from: http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/css/article/view/j.css.1923669720120805.ZR0194
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/j.css.1923669720120805.ZR0194.

Introduction

Soft culture power promotion is an important aspect of the outstanding cultural heritage or important source for the ideological and cultural innovation. To play the role of cultural education, it is necessary to strengthen the construction of socialist core value system. In order to master the accumulated cultural achievements of our predecessors, discard the old justice, create of new knowledge, spread to the community and continue into future generations of continuous training of advocating science, the pursuit of truth as well as ideas is very important to promote the soft cultural power in China. By carrying out cultural exchanges with foreign countries it gives a better understanding of foreign cultural and technological trends, the latest achievements and showcase for the contemporary Chinese. The education of international students and international students studying in China will enhance the international influence of China’s cultural soft power and the Chinese culture will probably help make a positive contribution to efforts to promote the progress of human civilization. Thus analysis of opportunities and challenges facing international students studying in China of Chinese cultural heritage and innovation, how to seize the opportunity and challenge, inheritance and innovation of Chinese culture in order to reduce the intrusion and influence of other external adverse culture are most important subjects in China.

1. Soft cultural power makes a great impact on the internationalization of higher-education in China

The development of economy has absorbed more and more international students who want to study in China. At the same time, it promotes the influence of China’s soft cultural power. The education of international students is to take full advantage of high-quality educational resources in a global scale and to be influenced by Chinese culture. Based on the nation’s fine cultural background and traditions with the basic national conditions, the specific and diverse higher-education and international exchanges ,cooperation as the media which is used to absorb and learn from the advanced countries of the world of educational philosophy and the school system, the use of foreign high-quality higher-education resources is to improve the country’s comprehensive strength and core competitiveness to cultivate an international perspective to know international rules well, the international talents to participate in international affairs and international competition. With the accelerating process of internationalization of higher-education, internationalization of higher-education are increasingly showing expansion of the Sino-foreign cooperation in the education space. Cooperation is rich in content as well as other characteristics. With the accelerated process of economic globalization and cultural pluralism, internationalization of higher-education has been in a rapid development. During the last thirty years, China sent more than 380 million students in a total of all types of studying and the main purpose of the idea is to learn advanced science and technology and management experience. After back to China, they have made outstanding contribution to the economic development and modernization.  Sino-foreign cooperative education project develops rapidly. According to incomplete statistics, China had more than 2,300 Sino-foreign cooperative education institutions and projects. Sino-foreign cooperation among schools are to introduce the necessary funds for the Chinese institutions of higher-education, to alleviate the lack of supply capacity of higher-education. Additionally, the introduction of foreign high-quality educational resources, advanced educational philosophy and management experience, can improve the international competitiveness of China’s quality of higher-education.

With the development of China’s economy, foreign trade and cultural exchange activities are increasing. “The influence of country’s culture depends on the economy development of it. More developed the economy is, more strong the culture influences spreads, and vice versa.(XIANG, 2001)”

With the rising demand of the Chinese culture, Chinese Hanban learn from the experience of developed countries, internationalization of higher-education which achieved out of the country to achieve the internationalization of education, for example, German Goethe Institute, Spanish Institute Cervantes, AF of France, etc.. They use Sino-foreign cooperation to running schools in the Overseas and spread the language culture. Developing Institute Confucius (Confucius Institute), that is Chinese University and the University of the country founder of Confucius College, bear important responsibilities to promote the national language and culture education, but also to strengthen the foreign exchanges and cooperation of the Chinese Universities, to broaden the area of international students studying in China. “Hanban has built 691 Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms in 96 countries and regions around the world until 2010.” The number of overseas students who learns Chinese is more than 40 million, more than 8,500 Chinese teachers and volunteers went to these countries in order to coach them. More than 6,000 students receive scholarships to study in China from 120 countries. Training Chinese is getting hot in the world and continues to heat up, more and more attention has been towards to China’s exchanges of all kinds of foreigners who are learning Chinese in the Chinese Confucius Institute through exchanges in the cultural globalization, integration, mutual infiltration and complementary manner, and constantly break of the national culture, geographical and model limitations. Broken the borders of the national culture in the process of cultural identity and cultural criticism to the diffusion of modern Confucian culture, looking for Confucianism and modern ideas of human rights, democracy and common obtained the world’s cultural identity and value of identity, a shared regional resources of the national culture into a human, shared resources, Confucius Institutes has played a huge role in innovation in the Chinese cultural heritage and leading the Chinese culture into the foreign mainstream culture. Now the mode of higher-education cooperation 2 +2 or 3 +1 has strengthened the communication in education and culture. In addition to the Confucius Institute, many of our colleges and universities with a Sino-foreign cooperation are in cooperation with the University of Thailand, Vietnam, Mongolia and other countries to promote furthermore the role of the Chinese cultural heritage of innovation, for example, the Vietnam students spend the last two years in China to complete their education in the project of Shanghai Institute of Finance and Hanoi Eastern University “2 +2” International Finance. Their experience in learning process in China helps them understand and accept Chinese culture and they has become the recipient and dissemination of Chinese culture. This learning delivery will also become the school system which is one of the internationalizations of Chinese universities. Confucius Institutes around the world sharing the inheritance and innovation of Chinese culture at the same time, they are opening up the internationalization of higher-education in China, which has also brought the influence of the European and American culture and a strong manner in to Chinese culture. Universities in Chinese-foreign cooperation can promote China’s international exchanges and dissemination of new technologies, accelerate economic growth but also affect the erosion of a nation’s culture. It is a great impact on the students in the ideological, political, religious, cultural and social understanding of aspects. Cultural expansion of the different military aggression and conflict, it is hidden and diversity. Without a high degree of vigilance and ability to identify, it is difficult to detect the hegemonic countries to implement the intent of cultural penetration and expansion. China’s excellent culture is facing a great challenge by Western culture and values today. The prevalence of English culture is particularly far-reaching impact on Chinese students, from lifestyle to the mode of thinking, as well as current research hot craze for graduate school. The pursuit of  the popular professional, and so on, are pragmatism performance, over development of this idea led to the flourishing from materialism and utilitarianism. Most Chinese students prefer Europe and USA and other country’s culture to traditional Chinese values and spirit.

2. Soft cultural power promotion affected by the internationalization of higher-education

Throughout the history of world civilization, the transmission and exchange between different cultures have always been the fountain of cultural development and construction. In addition to the conclusion on the practical experience, the inheritance of national history and culture is mainly accomplished through education. The higher education is undertaking the important mission of inheriting and filtering fine culture or disseminating the high-level culture, particularly with the continuous developments of modern civilizations. How to cope with challenge of western culture in the internationalization of higher education and how to keep characteristics of our national culture and eliminate the western cultural hegemony to promote the inheritance and innovation of Chinese culture in the basis of absorbing western advanced culture have been a very important task at present for the internationalization of higher education and cultural development.

Firstly, we should study the development history of the internationalization of higher education and learn its background, root and characteristics, and then analyze the current situation and the roles that the different cultures, areas and countries have played in the internationalization of higher education, especially that we should focus on the development strategy or purposes of higher education and scientifically predict its development trends and explore the strategies and solutions in the internationalization of higher education. Besides, we should make proper analysis on the opportunities and challenges of Chinese higher education reformation brought by the internationalization of higher education or try to avoid the risks and correctly deal with the truth that the internationalization of “higher education is an edged sword which can bring Chinese culture with both advantages and disadvantages. (DONG, ZHANG)” We can make full use of the internationalization to promote the quality of our higher education and to inherit and innovate Chinese culture with developing the talents who have the excellent Chinese cultural literacy and international vision and have a good knowledge of international rule to participate the international affairs and competition. Based on the effect of the internationalization of higher education on the culture, we have to explore strategic thinking of our internationalization of higher education and cultural inheritance and innovation, especially that we should combine the education reformation of Chinese colleges to explore the development patterns of education in the internationalization of higher education, and should study how can the colleges make the Chinese cultural inheritance or innovation healthily developed in the internationalization of higher education through methods such as discipline construction, qualified personnel construction, training of students and scientific research.

Secondly, we should carry on the reformation and innovation of cultural education in higher education. We can improve the content of Chinese cultural education such as course that we have now in college: College Chinese, Chinese Literature, World Civilization, and etc. Also we can raise the specific goals and requirements and draw up the relevant development plan, and add the relevant courses and put the compulsory credits into practice. In the Chinese-foreign cooperation in running schools, we should particularly improve the courses about Chinese culture or cross-cultural education to strengthen the cultural literacy and recognition ability of cultural critique of Chinese students who is going to study abroad, only with which they can stay awake and stick to the roots of our national culture. This attitude of neither completely restoring ancient culture nor overall westernization is beneficial to keep our outstanding national culture as well as absorbing the excellent world cultural achievement. Following the principle of make the past serve present; make the foreign things serve China”, we should critically accept and integrate the excellent cultures with cross-cultural perspective of justice, tolerance and openness to seek Chinese cultural inheritance and innovation.

Thirdly, we should strengthen the course construction of teachers and teaching materials for the overseas diploma and non-diploma student coming to China such as Introduction to China or Chinese Cultural Situation, etc. We must take full advantage of the Chinese cultural inheritance and innovation stage to process the cultural communication and show the elegant demeanor of Chinese higher education to the world with the attitude of mutual respect or seeking common grounds while reserving differences in the teaching process of cultural collision and amalgamation. Moreover, we can make effort on enhancing the soft power and international influence of Chinese culture. The Chinese excellent culture such as “Harmony is the most valuable”, “Harmonious yet different”, “The benevolent love men” and “Never do to others what you would not like to do to yourself”,have promoted the development of Chinese culture education institutions and the transmission of Chinese culture while communicating with the Christ culture, Islamic culture and Buddhist culture, etc. Meanwhile, we should be working on the development of Confucius Institute abroad and the establishment of culture-transmission base overseas, which can make more nations and more people learn and inherit Chinese culture, and make Chinese culture become worldwide to contribute to human beings.

Therefore, the internationalization of higher education has a great influence on the inheritance and innovation of Chinese culture we should take advantage of it to effectively process the inheritance and innovation of Chinese culture, which is of great strategy for our higher education development. Our study of the internationalization of higher education for over 30 years has accrued great accomplishments. Most of the relevant experts and scholars make analysis from Macroscopic perspective on the situation and trends of the internationalization of higher education and on how to make national development strategy and how to deal with the opportunities and challenges from the internationalization of higher education. On the whole, the systematicness, strategicness and practicability of the study work about the influence on the cultural inheritance and innovation from the internationalization of higher education still need to be strengthened. We should positively study the coping strategies and work on the detailed measures, and make continuous analysis on the new changes and new trends of the internationalization of higher-education, through which we can boost the international transmission and innovation overseas of Chinese culture and make Chinese brilliant culture benefit human beings.

References

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