Culture clash?
Yesterday I saw an article named 'Chinese culture is polluted by Western commercialism' which located on CHINAdaily BBS. The author show his viewpoints like ...It is in the streets. It is in the air. It is all over the towns and TV channels across China. One cannot escape from the commercialism which is polluting the sights and sounds in China. Commercials trying to show what the cool and new trendy in China, but really just out to sell Western products. It is a new poison to the Chinese culture. Sitting at a bus station waiting for a bus, it makes me sad when I see more Chinese wear shirts with English on them rather than Chinese characters. Whatever happened to promoting Chinese brands and Chinese culture?
Frankly speaking, in the point of author, I indeed agree some descriptions which appeared in the article like "One cannot escape from the commercialism which is polluting the sights and sounds in China. Commercials trying to show what is cool and new trendy in China, but really just out to sell Western products. It is a new poison to the Chinese culture." But I cannot agree all of the point of view of the author.
Admittedly, it is an inescapable trend, but it is not only in China, it is all over the world. The main reason is that the West still hold overwhelming economic might, nevertheless their culture also creeps into the Chinese society together with trade and technological exchanges.
Furthermore, economic today becoming global than any other history era. Although our country was influenced by foreign country so much, fortunately, our traditional culture will never be forgotten. The popular commercialism only a superficial phenomena. Behind the boom of our economy is the boom of our culture. For example, during last century, Japanese raised. The main reason of the risen is benefited by influence of Western technology. And Japanese also came through a course of wildering its culture, but after the country's economy strong enough, the government started to renew its culture or traditional culture. Now, the situation China faced is similar with Japan in last century.
According to the dialectic, everything has two faces. The phenomena which mentioned by the author is not all the bad things. The good side I have observed is that more and more Chinese pay more attention to environment protection, culture preservation and civil rights. In some way, it indicates that with the influence of the West, China is on the way to a civil society, and people's awareness of rights has never been stronger. On the other hand, with Chinas economic rising, its influence, like language, culture, over the world is growing. The fashion of learning Chinese nowadays can testify me viewpoint.
To sum up, the losing of our country culture is only a temporary phenomenon, as the rise of our country and nation, we will revive our culture in the future.
