Abstract: From the perspective of the positional relationships between different cultural types of humans, cultures are concrete, particular, experience-bounded and diverse due to the regional and ethnic limitation. However, civilization, as the extraction, abstraction and transcendence of a culture, is characterized by commensuration and universality. It is the transcendental feature of civilization that provides metaphysical space for Chinese and Western cultures to reflect, learn mutually and integrate into each other. The comparison between Chinese and Western cultures aims to realize mutual compliment and reflection based on the particularity of their ways of thinking, whereas the comparison between Chinese and Western civilization aims to achieve integration and sharing based on commensuration. For a backward country in terms of modern civilization, whether it can overcome the syndrome of culture or civilization adaptation determines its speed of entering the common civilization progress in the world. How fast it catches up with the progress of modern civilization depends on how well it overcomes the culture or civilization syndrome. As an original civilization with glorious history and tradition, Chinese culture has experienced arduous modernity transition and still has a long way to go. In this process, it is urgent for Chinese culture, based on its own unique experience and culture, to find and extract transcendent and universal values that have commensuration with human common civilization through comparison and mutual learning between Chinese and Western cultures, and form and develop consensus. Only in this way can the modern transformation of Chinese culture and the effort to construct “a community of shared future for mankind” meet our expectation.

Key words: civilization, culture, Chinese and Western cultures, universalism, a community of shared future for mankind, political ecology