What is cultural integration?

Since the end of the last century, "cultural integration" has become a frequently used word in the theoretical circle, so that some people say, "There is no time when so many scholars have invested so much energy". [2](P2) In my opinion, this phenomenon is mainly based on two foundations of China society.

First, although the term "cultural integration" has been frequently used in the last decade or two, the social phenomenon it summarized appeared as early as the Westernization Movement after the Second Opium War in the19th century. At that time, China people adhered to the principle of "learning from foreigners to control foreigners" and "learning from the middle school as the body and learning from the west for use". Later, it developed into a deeper reform movement of 1898, which advocated constitutional monarchy. At the same time, more thorough revolutionary ideas are also growing, and in the 20th century, another state form with modern significance was formed. To sum up, the "erosion" of western culture in China has a history of 150 years, which is a huge cultural movement. However, due to various reasons, we have not carried out cultural statistics, cleaning, integration and transplantation reasonably and effectively. Although many elites have done a lot of work in some aspects, such as "statistics" or "cleaning up", the statistics, cleaning up, integration and transplantation of the whole cultural project cannot be completed by some pedants alone. It is not only a theoretical project, but also a practical project, and it is also a project of the whole society. Therefore, it is impossible to complete without the participation of the whole society, and our society has never done it systematically.

Let's take a look at some things that we often encounter. In the court, it is often the superiors who want to check the construction of spiritual civilization in the city, and the municipal party Committee and municipal government call on the city to mobilize. So the court dispatched some policemen every day, and under the leadership of the hospital leaders, they went to the streets with other relevant personnel to eliminate filthy advertisements and expel beggars and vendors. In addition to these things, superiors often assign tasks such as transferring judges to help the poor, teaching, social education, family planning, and urging public grain.

Why do bureaucrats and ordinary people in China think it is normal to do such a thing without dividing responsibilities? The author thinks this is because they are used to using the word "parents" to summarize state organs. "Parents" means that officials, like parents, take good care of their dependent children, and "parents" also means meticulous care. Traditional China people like such officials. But in the modern concept, this is extremely absurd. First of all, in modern concepts, equality means independence, rather than being "taken care of" by parents like minors. Secondly, in modern society, the official's duty behavior should not be out of "love" or "care", but out of the explicit provisions of the law. In addition, meticulous "care" also means all-round interference, which is intolerable in modern democratic politics. But in the subconscious of China people, the Chief Executive is everything, which really stems from the ancient political system in China. So, of course, the municipal party committee and municipal government can command all institutions within their jurisdiction. Some people say that there is nothing that the British Parliament can't do except turn men into women. In the eyes of China people, the Chief Executive has the ability to ascend to heaven. Therefore, in reality, it is very common for the administration to arbitrarily interfere with the judiciary and regard the judiciary as a department and its own subsidiary, which is also an important reason for corruption and judicial paralysis.

The conflict between China's traditional culture and western culture in the economic field is equally fierce, such as weak subjective consciousness and inadaptability to the elimination mechanism.

Therefore, cultural integration has become the need of social development.

Second, the development of commodity economy and the establishment of socialist market economic system urgently need to integrate culture. The traditional culture of China is incompatible with the commodity economy. But since 1980s, commodity economy has developed rapidly with its strong vitality. At the same time, it has had a serious impact on people's concepts and consciousness. People's awareness of rights is constantly strengthening, and the concept of subject is also constantly strengthening. The concept of "a word spoken by a gentleman is hard to recall" is changing, and the "ceremony" in traditional culture is being replaced by clearer legal rules. From this perspective, the current cultural integration also has a social foundation of spontaneous demand.