Universities in China have put general education into practice in a variety of ways. One of the important approaches is to set up writing general courses, learning from world-class universities. Taking Princeton University in the United States and Tsinghua University in China as examples, this paper made participatory observation and questionnaire investigation and analysis. It is found that writing general courses have their advantages in cultivating students’ research-based learning and critical thinking. In their course iteration, domestic and foreign universities gradually divide into different forms in their topic matrix, namely topic “array” and topic “spectrum.” The China-based improvement of writing general courses is of great significance to consolidating professional education and improving higher education.