A Study On The Western Universal Values

As globalization and the reform and opening-up continue to further, western trends of thought flock in. Universal values, as part of the trends of thought, become the academic focus immediately. And scholars have made their own interpretations of universal values from their own perspectives of study. However, their study results vary, in particular in the definition, foundation and content of universal values, which results in the confusion of the understanding of this trend of thought to such an extent that socialist ideology has been greatly impacted. Thus, the author, as a teacher of ideological education, believes that she is obliged to give guidance to people, in particular to the college students on how to put universal values in perspective so that the college students’ confusion about universal values can be cleared up.This paper, by analyzing the definitions and origins of universal values and western universal values, proposes that the essence of the current universal values is per se the western universal values with "democracy, liberty and human rights" as their core against the backdrop of globalization. This category of universal values consist of political, economic and cultural propositions, including capitalist democracy and liberty, free market economy, and the dominance of western culture and its increased penetration of other cultures. In addition, this paper studies the ways in which western universal values disseminate in China and puts forward that this dissemination in the past years has exerted negative influences on Chinese socialist ideology, which gives rise to westernized thoughts and the tendency of negating the fruits of socialist construction. Lastly, the author of this paper stresses that the core socialist values should be the prevailing social trend of thought in resisting and removing the penetration and negative influences of western universal values as long as college students are able to better access the education of socialist core values whose influence can be strengthened through media promotion if the nature of the western universal values is thoroughly understood so as to tackle the impact of the western universal values on China.This paper, with universal values as its subject of study, elaborates on the falsity of western universal values based on the current study results on this subject. And this paper attempts to shed some light on the study of universal values and the criticism of the western universal values in hope of offering some theoretical basis and empirical experience so that socialist values are able to better resist the impact of the western universal values.