China needs cultural power

Edited and translated by People's Daily Online

We have to admit that although China is a large and ancient cultural country with a history of 5,000 years and abundant cultural resources, China is still not a strong cultural country. China's cultural construction has made great achievements, but China's culture is still abundant but not prosperous. China has been a "literary country" for a long time, but now in the 21st century, the total annual income of China's more than 500 publishing houses is less than the annual income of the Bertelsmann Group of Germany.

Internationally, China's weak economic condition has improved a lot, and therefore, China's weak cultural condition should also be improved. As a large developing socialist country, China raised up the flag of socialism in a period when the international socialist movement was at the low tide. The outstanding usually bear the brunt of attack. As China's comprehensive national strength is growing and international status is rising, it has become very hard to disturb and contain China's development or push over China by hard power.

Therefore, China's opponents are accumulating soft power and encircling and suppressing China by ideological invasions. Nowadays, the country that holds a dominant position in the cultural development will be able to hold the initiative more firmly in the fierce international competition.

Domestically, China is still in the primary stage of socialism and will be in this stage for a long period, and the contradiction between the people's growing material and cultural demands and the undeveloped social productivity is still the principal contradiction of China's society. Establishing an overall well-off society benefiting all the people of China means that the people would enjoy not only an affluent material life but also a healthy and colorful cultural life. The people's spiritual needs will be better satisfied, spiritual world will be enriched and spiritual power will be strengthened.

China should be based on both the outside and domestic environments, appraise the situation correctly, and change itself from a large and ancient cultural country into a strong cultural country. Answering the calls from the people, according to the law of development and shouldering the historic responsibility, the sixth Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee of the Party that is being held in Beijing is taking cultural reform as the theme for the first time and is making guidelines of actions to build up China into a strong socialist cultural country.

As long as we respect and improve the cultural root of China, inherit and renovate the cultural spirit of China and absorb and learn from foreign cultures, we will be able to successfully establish a strong socialist cultural country that matches China's rich cultural deposits and abundant cultural resources, adapts to China's overall layout of the socialism with Chinese characters and is in the spirit of China's goal of establishing a prosperous, democratic, civilized and harmonious socialist modern country.