Although the awareness of national cultural security had germinated in ancient times, yet it was not until the capitalist world market had formed in modern times and particularly not until the conflict had become exceedingly fierce due to the colonization of eastern countries by western powers that cultural security has increasingly become a grave issue. In those days, a few developed capitalist countries not only mounted military invasions and political oppressions of relatively underdeveloped nations but also exercised cultural invasion, penetration and hegemony toward them. Accordingly, the issue of national cultural security has gradually become distinct and noticeable2077031. It is true that the term “cultural security” has been used in recent years, but to some extent, such concepts as “cultural invasion” and “cultural penetration” have already been treated as issues of cultural security in different ways.2077032 The term “cultural security” was read now and then in publications in Chinese published in the 1980s. For instance, in the essay titled “East Asian Dramas: A Challenge Across Time”, by using the rise of East Asia economy and technology as an introduction of the subject and the East Asian dramas as an example, the author argues that, as a result of the Western cultural imperialism, the East Asian culture has in turn begun to undermine the Western cultural security as a very material force.2077033 Nevertheless, it was not until the late 1990s that cultural security became an issue of interest that began to attract the attention of the researchers of national security and to be conscientiously treated and studied as part of national security.2077034 As cultural security has increasingly become a focus of research in China in the 21^st century, not only experts and scholars in the research field of national cultural security make an in-depth study of the subject and an important part of the national security research from different perspectives, but many others in realms of culture research including linguists have taken it up as a new focus of academic interest and have started to make inquiries about the issue from various perspectives. Driven by such growing academic interest in the research of national security and national cultural security, especially by the waves of thoughts on non-traditional security, the Chinese government has more officially and more intensively started to discuss issues of national security and nontraditional security issues including those of cultural security. In September, 2004, in an official document titled The CPC’s Decision to Enhance the Governing Capacity, which was ratified by the 4th Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee, the term “cultural security” was first used in an official document claiming that the government would try by all means to safeguard the national political, economic, cultural and information security.2077035 With a decade’s constant efforts in this regard, Chinese President XI Jinping in 2014 proposed an overall perspective of national security for the first time in history, clearly emphasizing that cultural security is a vital component of national security of China and claiming at the same time “to build an integrated system of national security encompassing political security, homeland security, defense security, economic security, cultural security, social security, science and technology security, biological security, resources security and nuclear security.”2077036

Now, China’s research on cultural security has relatively deepened into a number of crucial theoretical problems, but it will still take more time before a few other issues in theory are clarified and settled, among which are those concerning what culture calls for security and what doesn’t. For China—an oriental ancient nation severely afflicted by western bullies, in theorizing and coping with issues regarding national security, especially when it comes to what culture requires security and what doesn’t, three types of relations that are entangled should be given more attention, namely, the relation between one’s own culture and that of other ethnic groups; the relation between advanced and undeveloped parts of a culture; the relation between one’s ethnic culture and so-called foreign advanced culture as related to the previous two. Accordingly, these three major relations came into being and were dealt with at different times in history. And such diachronic and gradual emergence of the three relations reflects three different types of thinking: (1) “me vs. you” thinking, with which one is likely to antagonize his or her own culture with other ethnic cultures; (2) “good vs. bad” thinking, with which one tends to dualize cultures as the “advanced” and the “underdeveloped”; (3) “me-good thinking,” with which one asserts that the ethnic are the advanced. The third has evolved as people try to make a compromise between the previous two modes of thinking. Such thinking still dominates the current research on national cultural security among the majority of researchers, despite the fact that the first mode of thinking has already faded out of people’s consciousness. The second mode has not yet evolved into a systematic theory although it spread far and wide quite a few years ago due to the deliberate orientation by the government that claimed to represent the advanced culture. Unfortunately, what was claimed to be accomplished in the cultural security research has not materialized. Although the third mode of thinking has been stressed repeatedly in the grand investigation of culture research and culture policy, it has not yet found its way into the detailed micro studies of culture, culture-related policies, and policies related to cultural security for the reason that people have not found a set of concrete approaches to, and procedures of, handling this grand orientation. Although researchers of culture and cultural security currently take a clear-cut stand on the third modes of thinking rather than doggedly insist on either of the first two modes while taking a side or in their manifest consciousness, the majority of them hover between the previous two. They fail to truly use the third modes of thinking to deepen the investigation into realistic issues and cope with them in a concrete manner. This paper is intended to investigate the three relations and three modes of thinking in such a manner, revealing the problem, offering a solution to it, suggesting new approaches to culture research, especially the dilemma of the ethnic and the advanced in the research of cultural security and providing a workable proposal which can be applied step-by-step.