Teaching China as a Global Culture

Recent decades have witnessed a striking change in the attitudes of students in American institutions of higher learning toward China as a subject for study. Whereas China formerly was ”exotic” because it was so old or so politically foreign to American students, now studying China is seen as an appropriate avenue to interesting employment and important careers. This has produced enormous increases in Chinese language course enrollments. But these changes bring new responsibilities to teachers: to the extent that we help shape the future through our students, we must balance our new emphases on shared political and economic ends with continued awareness of cultural differences. As China's interpreters to students in the West, we must engage new analytical paradigms in order to promote greater understanding among our peoples in the highly competitive global marketplace for goods and ideas.