ABSTRACT
In theory, westernization and assimilation into Chinese culture are not compatible processes. At the beginning of Republican China, for example, many revolutionaries as well as intellectuals were torn between the Chinese and Western civilizations, unable to bring these two forces into harmony. In reality, however, the choice has never been absolute. Those influenced by different forces of civilization have displayed a variety of responses which no model of human behavior can successfully predetermine. While China adapts to the multiple, contradictory, constantly evolving facets of modernity, no one can define what being Chinese means. It is often politics that sensitizes the issue of Chinese versus Western and that compels ordinary people to rethink their identity as Chinese and choose a fixed position in the Western/Chinese dichotomy.
