Concept of Cultural Differences Between Chinese and Western University Culture Based on the Idea of Isomerism

Abstract

Chinese higher education has entered the stage of connotative development, and the important status of university culture as the main position of university soft power construction is unceasingly highlighting. Chinese modern university, as an exotic adopted from western university system, is always the most violent domain of east-west cultural exchange and confrontation. For a long time, in the development of Chinese university culture, influence from western university system has always been an unavoidable confusion. Through analysis and comparison, the Chinese and western university cultures can be regarded as isomers, which is a concept based on chemistry, the differences and conflicts between which are the results of isomerism. Through the analysis of isomerism between the Chinese and western university cultures, this paper proposed and constructed the university culture “isomers model,” which provides a new research paradigm for the construction and development of Chinese characteristic university culture.

Project supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 10BSH029) and Socialist theory and the union development research subject of Dalian University of Technology.