Culture is the vein and foundation of every nationality and every country. It has been lasting for generations. Those being passed down despite long history are mostly profound and thriving spiritual and cultural treasure, needing our inheritance and promotion. It’s just like what is said by the general secretary Xi Jinping that “it’s proved by the history and the reality that a nationality abandoning or betraying it’s history and culture won’t develop and will probably be a historical tragedy”. Blindly following others as well as ignoring or even abandoning one’s history and culture are pathetic and even horrified.
In a new era, China’s cultural construction shoulders new responsibility and mission. We need to make full use of rationality to correct misunderstanding and wrong ideas, so as to embark on a new journey with resolution and create new glory in cultural cause.
After bringing up confidence in path, theory and system, the CPC Central Committee brought up the “forth confidence” which is confidence in culture. Xi Jinping said that “Chinese civilization lasts more than 5000 years. Also, our culture has been continuing since the beginning. We need to have confidence in system, theory and path as well as culture. Cultural confidence is the foundation.” In the modern society, we need to know that cultural confidence is the foundation of all causes. It’s not blind confidence. This kind of confidence is based on the systematic understanding of our culture, historical process and developing rule. Having a good concept of our nationality and the culture of our country, on the base of which we need enough recognition, high-degree of trust and strong love. We need to adhere to our outstanding tradition and to implement advanced theory to guarantee the strong vitality and solidarity of the socialist advanced culture, so as to push forward the economy and society.
Having cultural confidence requires us to follow the guidance of Marxism. Marxism philosophy and Marxism cultural ideas are in line with the rules of the history of social development and of the cultural development. We need to understand the meaning of Marxism cultural development idea to tell the backward and decadent culture, then resist or change it. We need to insist the guiding position of Marxism to guarantee the nature and direction of socialist culture with Chinese characteristics and to guarantee the development and prosperity of the socialist culture with Chinese characteristics.
China is a country with many ethnic groups. The CPC and the Chinese government always follow the principles of respecting differences, being inclusive to diversity and having firm cultural confidence, which is the prerequisite for people of all nationalities to engage in the construction of a socialist harmonious society to realize the rejuvenation of Chinese nation. Meanwhile, we need to be aware of factors destroying the main theme. The government also needs to resist the disturbance and erosion of all wrong ideas, to lead social tendency with the advanced culture and to educate people to have firm cultural confidence. The whole society should have common spirit, ideas, value standard and moral standards; resist wrong ideological thoughts with the socialist advanced culture and make Marxism the main force in ideas and culture.
The core of the outstanding Chinese culture are revolutionary culture and the socialist advance, which are created after the CPC and people going through multiple fights. Insisting to see Marxism as a spiritual guidance and a value leader indicates the high-level of spiritual pursuit of the Chinese nation and represents the unique spiritual mark of Chinese nation. Marxism is the fundamental guidance to develop socialism with Chinese characteristics and to develop socialist culture with Chinese characteristics, deciding the fundamental nature and the main direction of the socialist core value. As a result, we need to follow the guidance of Marxism which is the main origin of the development of China’s cultural construction.
Having cultural confidence must maintain the subjectivity of Chinese culture. We need to criticize, learn and keep up with the time from the perspective of historical materialism and treat cultural exchanges between countries and nationalities with a cultural attitude and perspective that are open, inclusive, diversified and rational, so as to have strong cultural confidence and safeguard our own cultural.
Socialist path with Chinese characteristics, socialism with Chinese characteristics, the system with socialist theory with Chinese characteristics and socialist ideas with Chinese characteristics for a new era are results of collective wisdom with the outstanding traditional Chinese culture as foundation and strength origin which have been created in a long history. Just like what is stressed by the general secretary Xi Jinping that “the Chinese culture is composed learn from merits of the cultures of all nationalities”. In the development of the current era, we must always guarantee that our culture need to keep up with the time. We must note that “keeping up with the time” doesn’t mean to learn everything from another culture. It means we need to consider many factors, including the condition of the harmonious co-existence of ethnic groups in China, diversified and prosperous cultural development and profound cultural resource; inheritance and promotion of strength-bearing Chinese culture; maintaining the subjectivity, nationality and uniqueness of the outstanding Chinese culture; foundation of new perspective and vision; background of innovative, developing, enriching and modern society as well as the need to continue the culture’s feature of the era, diversity, innovation and subjectivity. With elements above, we can be more firm in cultural confidence and gather spiritual strength, so as to lay a stronger foundation to realize China dream.
The outstanding traditional Chinese culture is the sum of the outstanding culture of all ethnic groups of Chinese nation. It comes form the spiritual vein and the cultural gene passed down from generation to generation by the 56 nationalities. This unreplicable valuable spiritual asset is not only full of rich content and profound connotation, but also have significant influence on people’s views of the world, life and value, so it’s the basis of Chinese nation’s continual-developing thoughts.
Xi Jinping pays attention to traditional culture. He stressed in his speech multiple times that “it’s our destiny to step on a development road suitable to our characteristics due to our unique cultural tradition, historical fate and basic national condition. When treating traditional Chinese culture and foreign things, we should use them according to our need and learn the beneficial part after telling them from wrong ones in a scientific way.” With the guidance of dialectical materialism and the need to inherit traditional culture and nationality culture, Xi Jinping said that we need to “remember the history to have a future and inherit to innovate. We must insist to go to the future from the past and expand our way ahead in the process of continuing the cultural vein of our nationality. This is how we do today’s cause well”.
Chinese culture and history have been lasting for a long time. It’s development is a process of exchanges between Chinese civilization and world civilizations. The outstanding traditional Chinese culture has been developing on the land of China since the beginning. It has stick to historical and cultural tradition as well we learn and integrate with the best part of foreign cultures, so as to enhance the internal driving force of itself and to stimulate stronger and more active vitality.
Along with the accelerating modernization, foreign culture’s impact on the traditional culture is stronger. If we abandoned tradition and lost the foundation, we would cut off our spiritual vein, then everything would lost their original source, even the spiritual vein would be perished. Such tragedies happened a lot at home and abroad. It’s proved by the history that only by relying on our own culture and the outstanding traditional Chinese culture can we step forward steadily in culture and enhance our confidence in path, theory, system and culture, so as to spend common effort for the rejuvenation of Chinese nation with high spirit.