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Highlighting the Humanistic Spirit in the Age of Globalization: Humanities Education in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2015

Wang Ning
Wang Ning*
Affiliation:
Department of Foreign Languages, Tsinghua University, and Institute of Arts and Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. E-mail: wangning@tsinghua.edu.cn
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Abstract

The essay first describes the Chinese intellectual condition in the age of globalization and the necessity of liberal arts or humanities education, and then deals with the function of humanities education in China’s institutions of higher learning with Tsinghua University as the particular case. Since current Chinese universities are divided into three types: (1) research universities; (2) teaching-research universities; and (3) teaching-oriented universities, liberal arts education always plays an important part in students’ comprehensive schooling although in most of the research universities priority is given to science and technology. As China has a long tradition of humanities education, even long before the establishment of those Western type universities, offering humanities education to all the university students as a major educational task has never changed. Even during the Cultural Revolution when all the universities stopped teaching and research work, students and faculty members were still educated with Mao’s instructions. Along with the rapid development of Chinese economy, traditional humanities are suffering more or less. But the author argues that no matter how rapidly the Chinese economy has been developing and how well Chinese people are pursuing the so-called Chinese Dream, it is necessary to pay attention to the humanities and to offer humanities education to young students. The author also offers his reconstruction of Neo-Confucianism as an alternative discourse to various postmodern discourses in the new framework of global culture.

Type
China in the Process of Globalization
Information
European Review , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 273 - 285
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2015 

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References

1.As for the advent of globalization in China and its effect on Chinese culture and literature, cf. Wang Ning (2001) Confronting globalization: cultural studies versus comparative literature studies? Neohelicon, XXXVIII(1), pp. 55–66; and Wang Ning (2002) Globalization and culture: the Chinese cultural and intellectual strategy.Neohelicon, XXIX (2), pp. 101–114.Google Scholar
2.There was a heated debate on the issue of the crisis of the humanistic spirit in 1995–96 launched by a group of scholars in Shanghai around the journals of Shanghai wenxue (Shanghai Literature) published in Shanghai and Dushu (Reading) published in Beijing. Dissatisfied with the rise of popular culture and prevalence of postmodern theory in the academic circles, these scholars tried to recover the old tradition of a humanistic spirit, something like a sort of new humanism. But this debate came to an end without any result.Google Scholar
3.Considering the function of Culture Studies in contemporary Chinese intellectual life, cf. Wang Ning (2003) Cultural studies in China: towards closing the gap between elite culture and popular culture. European Review, 11(2), pp. 183–191.Google Scholar
4.Since many young talented students want to further their studies in the West, they spend more time studying English than reading Chinese classics. So some scholars of Chinese studies are trying to call for teaching all the university students the course ‘college Chinese’ instead of ‘college English’, which should be an elective course.Google Scholar
5.In order to celebrate the centennial of Tsinghua University in 2011 and to give full play to its past humanities tradition, the University authority decided in 2009 to found a new Institute of Chinese Studies.Google Scholar
6.As for the important role played by Qian Zhongshu and Tsinghua University in the history of China’s comparative literature, cf. Wang Ning (2006) ‘Death of a discipline’? Toward a global/local orientation of comparative literature in China. Neohelicon, XXXIII(2), pp. 149–163.Google Scholar
7.Considering the historical evolution of the Philosophy Department of Tsinghua University and its present status, cf. Wan Junren (2003) A characterization of philosophical knowledge in ‘Chinese Modernity’: philosophical studies in Chinese universities and the Academy of Social Sciences. European Review, 11(2), pp. 171–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8.Considering the interesting and complicated relations between Confucianism and postmodernity, cf. Wang Ning (2010) Reconstructing (neo) Confucianism in a ‘glocal’ postmodern culture context. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 37(1), pp. 48–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9.This project was launched by the Chinese Writers Association and supported by the Ministry of Finances, and is aimed to select 100 excellent contemporary Chinese literary works, chiefly novels or novellas, and translate them into the major foreign languages, especially English. I happened to have been invited to attend one of the preparatory meetings in Beijing in March 2006.Google Scholar
10.This project is now executed chiefly by the Office of the State Leading Group for Teaching Chinese to Foreigners and is aimed to popularize the Chinese language and culture worldwide.Google Scholar
11.Wei-ming, Tu (1993) Preface. In: Way, Learning, and Politics: Essays on the Confucian Intellectual (Albany: State University of New York Press), pp. ix–x.Google Scholar
12.Cheng, Cf. C.-y. (2007) Preface: the inner and the outer for democracy and Confucian tradition. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 34(2), Special issue on Democracy and Chinese Philosophy, p. 152.Google Scholar