A strong country or nationality is always supported by prosperous culture. Without the inheritance and development of civilization, there’s no cultural promotion and prosperity, thus no China dream. The Chinese nation has created the Chinese civilization with a long culture, so it must have the ability to start a new glory of Chinese culture. We need to stick to the socialist cultural development road with Chinese characteristics; promote socialist advanced culture and push forward the development and prosperity of socialist culture, so as to enrich people’s spiritual world; enhance people’s spiritual strength and build a socialist country with strong culture.
In 2013, Xi Jinping went to Qufu in Shandong province, a famous historical and cultural city, for an inspection of the Kong Family Mansion and Confucius Research Institute of China as well as for a symposium with experts and scholars. He stressed that the outstanding traditional Chinese culture is a prominent advantage of the Chinese nation whose rejuvenation needs to be based on the development and prosperity of the Chinese culture, so we must promote it.
Chinese nation boasts uninterrupted civilization of more than 5000 years, during which Chinese civilization is created, contributing to the progress of the human civilization. In Chinese civilization if the most profound spiritual pursuit of the Chinese nation, including the most basic gene of the Chinese nation and representing the most unique spiritual mark of the Chinese nation, both of which are rich nutrition of the lasting development of the nationality. Since it’s foundation, the CPC has been a loyal inheritor and promoter of the outstanding traditional Chinese culture as well as the promoter and developer of Chinese advanced culture. We need to use all spiritual fortune of the Chinese nation to nurture people. There’s no way to abandon the outstanding cultural tradition of the Chinese nation.
We need to treat traditional culture with scientific attitude. Xi Jinping points out that “we can’t step into the future without the past and we can only innovate with inheritance.” The traditional Chinese culture is the “root” and “soul” of our nationality, so if we abandon the tradition, we cut our own spiritual vein. We need to use Marxist methods and attitude; use ancient culture for the benefit of the present; made innovation with knowledge form the past; treat different parts of culture differently as well as inherit the beneficial part and abandon the harmful part of the culture. We shouldn’t just value the past, nor the present.
We need to inherit and promote traditional culture. We need to have a clear concept of the history, development and the future direction of the traditional Chinese culture as well as to speak out loud the unique creation, value concept, characteristics and the enhancement of cultural confidence and value. The traditional culture should be organized, so vitality can be injected into cultural relics in the palace, cultural heritage scattered on the vast land of China and Chinese characters in ancient books. We need to learn the essence of the outstanding traditional Chinese culture which composes the value of the contemporary era, including kindness, people-centered ideas, honesty, justice, harmony and ideal society. Relating departments should promote the outstanding culture and glorious history of Chinese people and nation through multiple methods, including education in school, theoretical research, historical research, movie and literature, so as to enhance the education of patriotism, collectivism and socialist education as well as to lead people to have correct views on history, nationality, country and culture.
We need to launch innovative transformation and development for traditional Chinese culture. The outstanding traditional Chinese culture still has room for adjustment so as to adapt to market economy, democratic politics, advanced culture and social governance. Promoting the outstanding traditional Chinese culture requires us to handle the relationship between inheritance and innovative development well, the key of which are innovative transformation and development. Innovative transformation means that under the features and requirements of the era, we need to transform culture worth of learning but with outdated form, then add new era content and modern way of expression, so as to stimulate it’s vitality. The innovative development is to follow the new progress and development of the era to add, expand and perfect the content of the traditional Chinese culture, so as to improve it’s influence and attraction.
Inheriting and promoting the traditional Chinese culture doesn’t means isolation from the world. Chinese nation is inclusive. We have been learning from other people and transform their best part into ours, thus form our own nationality feature. Civilizations are more and more colorful because of communication as well as richer and richer because of mutual-learning. Of course, we need to learn the outstanding achievements of civilizations created by people from different countries and enrich and develop Chinese civilization in the process.
Cultural soft power represents vitality and solidification based on culture as well as the attraction and influence forming in this way. No matter in the past or present, development of a major country is the improvement of not only hard power like economy or military, but also soft power like thoughts, value and culture. In the December of 2013, Xi Jinping said in the 12th collective study of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee that improving national cultural soft power is relate to China’s position in the world cultural structure, to China’s international position and influence and to the realization of the “two centenary goals” and rejuvenation of Chinese nation.
We need to solidify the foundation of the national cultural soft power. It requires us to improve the power inside and aim for achievements outside, which is our way to improve cultural construction to build a socialist country with strong culture. We need to carry on cultural system reform; improve the culture governance system and cultural production and business system and improve the cultural opening level, so as to construct a cultural development environment conducive to innovation and creation. The government needs to develop public cultural undertaking with basic level of the society, especially rural areas as the key. Cultural benefit projects should also be launched to improve public cultural service, then support the basic public cultural service to be distributed to people in a standard and equal way. We need to develop social and philosophical science to popularize scientific knowledge and to launch national fitness champion. We should support cultural industry; pay attention to the quality and benefit; push forward strategic adjustment to the structure; optimize the industrial layout; expand the scale; support the intensification; improve the professional level and push forward the cultural industry to be the main support of national economy. In the process of supporting cultural system reform and develop public cultural undertaking and cultural industry, the authority should handle the relationship between the ideology and business as well as between social and economic benefit. The direction of socialist advanced cultural development should never be changed and social benefit is always the priority. No matter what we change and how we change, the direction and the stance should be remained the same.
The relating department should promote Chinese value and concept in the contemporary era. That’s the socialist value in the contemporary era, representing the direction of Chinese advanced culture. China has created socialist road with Chinese characteristics. It’s proved by the practice that our path, system and theoretical system are successful. The next step is to enhance abilities for summarizing and interpreting, to expand the platform and to enhance the carriers for international communication, so as to adhere Chinese value in every aspects of the international communication. We need to better promote and interpret China dream from aspects of history, country, individual and the world. China dream indicates the value recognition and the value pursuit; the construction of a relatively prosperous society in all aspects and the realization of the rejuvenation of Chinese nation; the realization of individual dreams in the process to transform China dream into reality; the dream of the majority of Chinese nation and the sincere with of Chinese nation to contribute to human’s peace and development.
We need to show the unique attraction of Chinese culture which is what differentiates Chinese from people of other nationalities. The most basic cultural gene of the Chinese nation should be adapt to the contemporary era and be coordinated with the modern society. The promotion should be liked by people and includes wide-spread participation. It should spread the culture with contemporary value with lasting attraction transcending nation and time. The contemporary Chinese culture is composed of traditional Chinese culture, the spirit of this era and adaption to China and the world. China shall gain the international recognition with reason, culture and morality, so it must improve the level of foreign exchanges; improve people-to-people communication mechanism and innovate the people-to-people communication method, so as to show Chinese cultural attraction through mass communication, group communication and interpersonal communication. We need to pay attention to the shaping of China’s image in the international community.
We need to let China have more say in the international community, which is an important component of China’s cultural soft power. In the current situation, western countries have more say when compared to that of China. So China ends up in a situation where we can’s speak our mind or our words won’t be heard. So we need to improve the ability of the international communication; innovate our way of foreign communication; construct a foreign communication system; make full use of emerging media and make our foreign communication more innovative, attractive and trust worthy, so as to tell China’s story well, to enable China’s voice to be heard by more and to interpret China’s feature well.