World Needs Diversified Cultures

The two-day New Century China-Africa Cultural Exchange Symposium ended in Beijing on October 25. Participating representatives from China and African countries jointly summarized the rich achievements gained in China-African cultural exchanges over nearly half a century, putting forward a number of proposals and ideas for continuing to deepen and comprehensively push forward China-African cultural exchanges.

More importantly, the symposium placed the theme of China-African cultural exchange for joint discussion conducted against the background concerning the establishment of a fair and reasonable international political and economic new order and understanding the theme at the height of maintaining the diversity of world cultures, thereby giving China-African cultural cooperation a completely new mission and rich content.

The participating representatives reached the consensus that the unique national culture of any country in the world, big or small, strong or weak, should be respected and should have its due position in the galaxy of world cultures, regardless of their social systems and the level of economic development. Treating the fine cultural traditions of various countries and nations without prejudice, and equally promoting multilateral and bilateral cultural exchanges between regions are one of the indispensable prerequisites for realizing peaceful coexistence between countries.

Cultures of different nations can only be exchanged, not replaced. In fact, recognizing and respecting the diversity of world cultures has become one of the norms governing international relations generally accepted by the majority of countries in today's world. Chinese scholars stressed in their speeches that with the conclusion of the Cold War, the position of cultural factors in international relations has continuously gone up, and the sensitivity of the cultural issue has become increasingly prominent.

Many facts in international relations have shown that a small number of Western countries, besides putting pressure on the developing countries by virtue of their tremendous comprehensive strength and seeking maximum benefits for themselves by their acts of harming the interests of the developing countries in the process of economic globalization, have paid attention to and strengthened the application of "cultural strength" in an attempt to exert influence on the developing countries by relying on their strong culture.

To counter this, the Chinese representative clearly declared that the Chinese government stands for the diversity of world cultures, advocates dialogs on an equal footing between different civilizations and cultures, devotes its efforts to promoting equal exchanges between different cultures and opposes the one-way transmission and extension of the culture of rich countries to poor nations.

Culture, in the final analysis, is the orientation of people's concept of value. Taking human rights as an example, Chinese scholars explained that in the cultural system involving different understandings of the concept of human rights, certain phenomena, appeared to be pure culture, actually contain explicit political attribute. Based on the new interventionist views, such as "the conflict of civilization" and "human right standing above sovereignty", some countries stress the "universal principle" of Western concepts, in order to achieve the aim of selling Western values to developing countries. In view of this, developing countries pay attention to protecting and developing national cultures, in essence, it is a principled question involving adherence to the orientation of national value in the process of marching toward modernization.

A look at the present state of global cultural transmission shows that one undeniable point is that any side of China and Africa is in a relatively weak position and this situation will continue for a period of time due to reasons of history and development process. Both sides have realized that under such circumstances, further strengthening cultural exchange and cooperation between China and Africa is obviously of special importance.

China is a country with a history of 5,000 years of splendid civilization, the long-standing, broad and profound Chinese culture, with its profound content and distinctive style, has enjoyed a consistent reputation in the world. The continent of Africa, universally recognized as one of the birthplaces of mankind, also possesses a rich and colorful cultural tradition and a time-honored human heritage. In the long development history of human civilization, both the Chinese and African peoples have made indelible contributions. As mankind is at the threshold of the new century, Chinese and African peoples are confident that in the process of world cultural exchanges, they can rely on unity and cooperation to develop and expand the strength of the developing countries, and this is what the symposium wanted to tell the world.

(This report, written by Our Staff Reporters Huang Zequan and Zhan Jingyu, is a sidelight on the "New Century China-Africa Cultural Exchange Symposium")

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