A Study On The Role Of Yenching University On Sino-Western Culture Communication

In recent years, China has played a pivotal role in the international political arena on the basis of her rapid developing economy. However, how to shape a good image in the international community and strengthen the appeal of Chinese culture to the people all over the world has become an important issue. Confucius Institutes and Class are the key projects under the guidance of the Chinese culture global communications strategy. This pattern of promoting culture exchange through developing education in foreign countries could be traced back to19th century, and Yenching University can be described as its successful representative. So researches on Yenching University could bring us more inspirations on dealing with culture communication issues today.Thanks to the combination of many Christian schools in the late19th early20th, Yenching University was born, and she became a famous university from an unknown church school in less than a decade. She has a good reputation at home and abroad and was strong attractive to many outstanding students and academic masters. She became the first class university in China, like Peking University and Tsing Hua University, and her success in education era was described as a miracle in the educational history. This paper focuses on studying the mechanism of Yenching University handling the culture conflicts and promoting the culture communication and integration, to find the useful implications for today.In the first part of this paper, author introduced the historic background why church schools arose, including the different situations between China and U.S. and the rise and development of church schools. This party is to put it in a great historical circumstance. The second part focuses on the process of Yenching University arising, development and achievements, which could help us have a full picture of Yenching University. The third part is the most important one in this article, which discussed the Yenching University’s role in Sino-Western culture exchange. The author respectively elaborates its contribution on Western culture spread in China and Chinese culture in western world, and also explores the deep reasons why Yenching University could play an important role in the culture exchange. Stuart’s culture view and the mechanisms on dealing with culture conflicts have been two key points. The last section summarizes the inspirations on today’s culture communication we could learn from Yenching University based on the previous analyzing.