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The Clash of Civilizations?
By Jiang Xueqin
November 8, 2011
http://the-diplomat.com/china-power/2011/11/08/the-clash-of-civilizations/
In conjunction with the Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times has just published a feature article on the 130,000 or so Chinese studying on American campuses. Ever since 2004, when the U.S. government relaxed visa requirements for Chinese students and American universities began recruiting Chinese undergraduates, Chinese not adapting well to American academic life has been a growing problem. And now, because the New York Times has pronounced it so, it’s officially a problem.
But what exactly is the problem?
The obvious answer is the language barrier, which results in Chinese students keeping silent in the classroom, and ostracizing themselves from campus life. Then, of course, there’s the cheating and plagiarizing, as well as the psychological and behavioral issues that arise from the culture shock.
The good news is that Chinese parents are themselves concerned, and Chinese students who are planning to study abroad are, as early as elementary school, taking weekend English classes, watching “Gossip Girl,” and attending summer camps in the United States. Chinese applicants to U.S. colleges and universities are increasing in terms of both quantity and quality.
But here’s the bad news: Cross-cultural tensions on the American campus may still increase because the problem isn’t Chinese students who can’t speak English – it’s fundamentally a clash of civilizations. Chinese and Americans have fundamentally different values, norms, and worldviews, and Chinese students on U.S. campuses is merely the first front of the inevitable struggle between the hegemon and its challenger.
Chinese students studying in America isn’t historically new – this is in fact the third wave. The first wave occurred around the turn of the 20th century, when a humbled China’s best and brightest, either on Christian missionary or government scholarships, went to a rising America to learn “science and democracy” to save the motherland. The second wave occurred after Deng Xiaoping’s opening up when China’s best and brightest went to U.S. graduate schools just to get the hell out of China. What distinguishes this third wave of Chinese study abroad students is that they are the children of a confident and assertive Chinese elite, and they have no intention of kowtowing to Americans; in fact, they think the world revolves around them, just like it did back in China.
In this way, many of these 130,000 or so Chinese students studying in the United States are no worse and no better than the scions of the South American, African, European, Asian and American elite currently studying in America. But what makes these Chinese students – many of whom while speaking terrible English are still much more polite and considerate than their American peers – stand out is that they’re Chinese in a time when a declining United States is more and more anxious about a rising China.
That’s why those Chinese students who are most frustrated with their experience in the United States are sometimes those who try hardest to surmount the cultural barrier. Read this paragraph from the New York Times / Chronicle of Higher Education story:
“[A Chinese marketing major] recalls one class in which, she says, the professor ignored her questions and only listened to American students. Also, while working on a group project in a sociology class, she says she was given the cold shoulder: ‘They pretend to welcome you but they do not.’ The encounters left a deep impression. ‘I will remember that all of my life,’ she says.”
Now read this comment posted online in response to the article:
“As a Chinese who studied in the U.S. with full scholarship, I appreciated the opportunity and the professors who helped me very much. However, I remember vividly how I was not so warmly welcomed by my fellow American students in group assignment…[M]ost Chinese like the U.S. That is why millions are learning English, watching American movies, and sending their children to the U.S. for their education are pro U.S…As a matter of fact, I got most of the negative image of the U.S. after I lived here for years.”
And these two Chinese students are hardly alone in their sentiments: For his college paper, Zhou Yeran, a former student of mine, wrote how many of his Chinese classmates at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, home to thousands of Chinese students, have negative impressions of America.
We can argue endlessly who’s at fault here, but the fact that China’s future elite will return to China one day and assume the mantles of power with such negative memories of their time in the United States isn’t a good thing. In fact, I know many overseas returned Chinese who have become wealthy thanks in part to their American graduate degree, but who nevertheless are far more nationalistic and xenophobic than the Chinese I know who’ve never been abroad.
The irony is that U.S. colleges and universities justify matriculating so many Chinese students as a way of bridging the vast Sino-American cultural divide. But some U.S. colleges and universities will say just about anything in order to justify using Chinese students to plug growing budget holes, even if doing so may have serious long-term geo-political consequences.
My fear is that trend of Chinese students studying in America is a ticking time bomb that will create an international crisis when it goes off: there are just too many there at a time when Sino-American relations are becoming more tense, and U.S. leaders are desperately looking for a scapegoat to explain away the problems they’ve created in the first place.
It’s good that the world’s most powerful newspaper has finally declared Chinese students studying in the United States to be a problem. It’s just that it’s a much bigger problem than we’re willing to admit.
《外交官杂志》文明的冲突
由译者志愿者翻译和校对http://yyyyiiii.blogspot.com/
核心提示：现实中，我知道很多从海外学成归国的中国人都变得很富有，有一部分原因是得益于他们的美国硕士学位，但是比起我知道的那些从没有出过国的中国人来讲，他们却更民族主义和排外。
为配合《高等教育编年史》，《纽约时报》发表了一篇关于在美国大学学习的大约13万名中国留学生的专题文章。自2004年开始，当时的美国政府放宽了面向中国留学生的签证政策，而美国大学则开始招募中国的大学生，中国人不能很好适应美国的学术环境已经日渐成为一个问题。
不过，问题究竟出在哪里呢？
不言自明的是语言障碍，它使得中国学生在教室里总是沉默不语，这也把他们自己斥于校园生活之外。当然其次，存在作弊和抄袭，也有因为文化冲击而造成的心理和行为上的问题。
好消息是中国的家长们很关心他们，准备出国的中国学生早在小学阶段就开始上周末的英语培训班，看《八卦女孩》，参加美国的夏令营。来自中国人的大学申请在数量和质量上都有了提高。
然而在这里也有坏消息：美国校园里的跨文化的紧张程度仍旧会上升。这不是因为中国学生不会说英文，而基本上是文明的冲突。中国人和美国人有着根本不同的价值观、行为准则、和世界观，在霸主与其挑战者之间必然会有争斗，而美国校园里的中国学生几乎不会站在这种争斗第一线。
中国学生在美国留学在历史上不是新鲜事——其实这已经是第三波留学潮了。第一波约莫发生在20世纪之交，当时一群中国最好的、最聪明的志士拿着传教士或者政府的奖学金，来到一个正在崛起的美国学习“科学与民主”以拯救他们祖国。第二波发生在邓小平的改革开放之后，那时中国的青年才俊来到美国的研究生院只是为了逃出地狱般的中国。有别于以往，第三波的留学生是一群自信的孩子，张扬中国精英，并且他们没有要为美国马首是瞻之意；事实上，他们认为世界围绕着他们转，就像现在的中国一样。
这样看来，大约130，000名的在美中国留学生中的许多人不比在那些美国学习的南美、非洲、欧洲、亚洲的后裔和美国的精英好或者差。许多中国学生虽然说着糟糕的英文，相比起他们的美国同学却礼貌细心很多。但是，让这些中国学生脱颖而出的原因是他们所在的这个时代正是一个没落的美国越来越担心一个崛起的中国的时代。
这就是为什么那些在美国对于自己的经历感到最沮丧的有时就是那些最努力想突破文化屏障的中国学生。请看看来自《纽约时报/高等教育编年史》的这个段落：
“【一位中国市场主管】回忆起一节课，她说，教授无视她的提问而只听美国学生的。而且，当她在做社会学课程的一个小组项目时，她说她吃了个闭门羹：‘他们假装很欢迎你但其实不然。’这些遭遇给她留下了深刻的印象。‘我会一辈子都记得这些，’她说。”
现在来看看对于这篇文章的网络评论：
“作为一个在美国学习时获得全额奖学金的中国学生，我非常感激这个机遇和给我大量帮助的教授。但是，我也很清晰地记得在小组作业中我是如何不太被我的美国同学欢迎的……大多数中国人喜欢美国。这就是为什么成千上万的人学习英文，看美国电影，把他们的孩子送去美国，因为他们所接受的教育是亲美的……不过事实上，在这里呆过几年之后，我留下的更多的是关于美国的负面印象。”
而对于这种伤感，这两位中国学生并不是特例。我曾经的一位学生，周烨然（音译），在他的毕业论文中记述了他在美国伊利诺伊大学厄本那—香槟分校有多少中国同学，上千中国学生中的多数都对美国有着负面的印象。
我们可以在这里无休止地争论是谁错了，但是中国未来的精英有一天将回到中国，带着在美国时不愉快的回忆继承权力，这样的事实都不是什么好事情。现实中，我知道很多从海外学成归国的中国人都变得很富有，有一部分原因是得益于他们的美国硕士学位，但是比起我知道的那些从没有出过国的中国人来讲，他们却更民族主义和排外。
具有讽刺意味的是，美国的大学辩解说录取这么多的中国学生可以联接广大中美地区的文化分裂。但是有些美国大学会说任何事情来辩解用中国学生去填补预算缺口，即便这么做会有严重而长期的地缘政治结果。
我的担忧是中国学生来美国留学的这个潮流是个定时炸弹，当这个潮流平息时，它会造成一个国际性的危机：在与中美关系变得紧张的多数情况下时，美国的领导人会拼命地寻找替罪羊来搪塞他们最初种下的恶果。
非常好的是，世界上最强有力的报纸最后表明中国学生在美留学将会成为一个问题。只不过这是一个比我们愿意承认的大得多的问题。
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狗仔卡
发表于 2011-11-12 08:26
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显身卡
发表于 2011-11-12 09:33
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