Interculturality as negotiation: Power, identity, and agency in China-West cultural encounters

Abstract

Against the backdrop of globalisation, transnational education, the mobility of people and the rapid development of digital media, the concept of cultural exchange between China and the West has shifted from a binary opposition of ‘Chinese culture versus Western culture’ to an exploration of ‘how cultural meaning is produced and negotiated through interaction’, and from ‘cultural transmission’ to ‘cultural co-construction’. However, traditional research has largely focused on the differences between Chinese and Western cultures, whilst there remains a lack of discussion on how cultural meaning is negotiated within asymmetrical relationships. This paper adopts a qualitative research methodology grounded in constructivist and interpretivist approaches. The research methods employed include semi-structured interviews, analysis of publicly available digital media content, examination of texts from transnational educational institutions, and a review of relevant academic literature. The ultimate aim is to explain how individuals understand, negotiate, resist and reconstruct cultural meaning within unequal power relations, and how this process influences their sense of identity and agency. This paper advocates shifting the focus of research on Sino-Western cultural exchange from ‘cultural differences’ to the negotiation of cultural meanings, the dynamic construction of identity, and the interplay between agency and power, thereby providing a more dynamic and critical analytical framework for understanding the new forms of Sino-Western cultural relations in the era of globalisation.