Editorial: What China can contribute to the world?

• Source: Global Times
• [18:22 August 24 2009]
• Comments

What can China contribute to the world? It is a big issue we need to seriously think about. We can offer the concept of a harmonious world, consistently taking the road of peaceful development, which is mutually beneficial and a win-win strategy for the world. These are what the world needs. But in the long run, what we are able to offer the world is primarily Chinese culture.

For centuries, western culture has contributed greatly to the world' s progress. However, no culture is perfect and it has its own strengths and weaknesses. Western culture is based on Christian civilization, which presents binary pairs of arguments. Good and evil, beauty and ugliness, orthodox and heterodox, heaven and hell, these are polar opposites and one must eliminate the other. Cultural determines concept, and the concept decides behavior.

Therefore, during the western world' s rise and its foreign relations, other countries suffered a lot. The west always felt the mission of civilizing the rest of the world on its shoulders, making others follow its path and learn its model. Disobedience was considered a heinous crime, so it fought against, sanctioned or even annihilated others. In this sense, the problems the world is facing today, to a certain extent, have something to do with the weaknesses of western culture.

Former US President George W. Bush said that the anti-terrorism war was a crusade. This statement caused an uproar in the Islamic world. His "Islamic terrorism" made Muslims furious throughout the world. During the Bush era, the US government proposed the "Greater Middle East Initiative" (a political term to cluster together various countries related to the Muslim world, specifically Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan), which was probably aimed at transforming Middle Eastern countries into American-style democracies.

Take a look at the western world's media today reporting on the issues of other countries -- it threw its weight around with insufferably arrogant, as if it was the world' s policeman, free to accuse others'  of wrong doing. Maybe sometimes it is right, but the tone was resentful. Chinese Internet users often express outrage at western media reports.

But when you look at Chinese media reports from abroad, there is a large amount of positive news. Wu Jianmin and Shi Yanhua have written a book entitled The diplomatic career in France. Some French people literate in Chinese commented that throughout this book the writers not only stayed away from criticizing France but also mentioned a lot of beautiful memories in the Gallic country and some good French things. But if a French person writes about China, he would not write in this way.

Chinese culture and western culture have similarities as well as differences. Chinese people brought up the idea of  "Harmony in Diversity"  more than 2,000 years ago. We know that the world is diverse; and within a country there are a variety of cultures. Cultural diversity cannot be eliminated. The agreement to accept differences and learning from each other in mutual emulation are the best approaches.

Chinese culture is the only uninterrupted ancient civilization. Why is it so long-lived and full of vitality? The fundamental reason is that Chinese culture is advancing with the times and willing to absorb ideas from other cultures to enrich itself. It is open rather than closed; inclusive rather than exclusive. Chinese culture is part of Asian culture. With the rise of the Asian region, maybe it is time for Chinese culture to make greater contributions to the world.
 

In the 21st century, what China could contribute to the world is probably not made-in-China products, but Chinese culture.
 

(Source: People's Daily; written by Wu JIanmin; translated by Ma Zhou)