When I was young in China my favorite English song was “A Bridge Over Troubled Water.”  However, at the time I did not realize that my vocation and destiny in life would be to become a bridge between China and the West—between tradition and modernity, and between different disciplines.  Nor did I realize that my hope would be to build these bridges for the sake of helping develop communities in China and the United States that are socially just, ecologically sustainable, and spiritually satisfying, thus helping sooth some of the ‘troubled waters’ from which the world now suffers. 

Influenced and inspired by process thought as a relational worldview, which puts emphasis on mutual immanence and interconnection, my colleagues and I are dedicated to bridge building.  We trust that mutual understanding and mutual appreciation, partly fostered by the worldview of process thought, are healthy ways of approximating the world peace for which so many rightly yearn. 

When I came to the United States, I was shocked by the deep misunderstanding and ignorance between China and the West.  Especially in China, the image of the West in general, US in particular, to a younger generation of Chinese is deeply influenced by Hollywood.  I sensed that it was my responsibility to help Chinese and Americans understand each other deeply, moving past the false stereotypes of media-driven images. 

My colleagues and I have encouraged responsible Westerners to have conversations with Chinese citizens, to share their experience, insights, compassion and hope.  So far we have arranged 160 lectures by non-Chinese scholars including Dr. John Churchill, secretary of Phi Beta Kappa, Dr. James Austin, a noted neuroscientist, and Ambassador Michael Breisky.  At the same time, we have arranged for the Chinese to lecture in the United States, and we have established eighteen ‘process research centers’ in China.  We have organized 30 international conferences whose topics cover diverse fields from education reform and sustainable education, to a dialogue between science and religion. 

We bring scholars and officials from different fields together in order to find solutions to pressing contemporary issues. For example, philosophers and educators have begun to learn to appreciate each other after several conferences on process thinking that we organized to explore education reform.  The fruits are practical as well as theoretical.  Inspired by such dialogue, Xiaoman Zhu, the president of National Central Institute for Education Studies and the head of the National Education Plan office in China, has been applying Whitehead’s philosophy to educational reform in China today. This is especially noteworthy, because these efforts affect 35 million students. 

Zhihe Wang, Ph.D. Director of The Institute for Postmodern Development of China: claremontwang@gmail.com