Abstract: By treating the intellectual debates in modern China as a paradigm of “learning from the other”， the new academic work Changing Referents of Leigh Jenco， a young American political theorist， provides new methods and ideas concerning the issue how western theories overcome western centralism. This also reflects a current new trend of the “spread of Chinese learning in the West”： western scholars attempt to explore the potentiality of universal theories in Chinese thought and practice.

Key words: universality and particularity, western centralism, the spread of Chinese learning in the West, a new trend