Scholar | China needs to promote cultural diversity

Feng Da-Hsuan

Although China’s ‘One Belt, One Road,’ (OBOR) scheme is expected to bring vital economic and technological developments in China, a scholar believes that the country still lacks the initiative to deepen its understanding of different cultures.
The principle of OBOR is to promote regional and cross-continental connectivity between China and Eurasia.
Hence, Feng Da-Hsuan, director of Global Affairs and special advisor to rector of the University of Macau explained that the East Asian country ought to promote knowledge about various histories and cultures of different countries in its region.
According to him, only three out of 3,500 institutions in China, are with scale-down efforts in learning about South Asia. “There are efforts now, you see a little, but too little, too few,” he lamented.
The centerpiece of China’s economic diplomacy may create new economic opportunities, however he questioned whether it could be a platform for a mindset transformation for the millennium.
Speaking on the sidelines of the monthly French Macau Business Association’s breakfast meeting held last week, the scholar recalled that universities in the renaissance period welcomed a “new cultural ambience,” which then attributed to developing a cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history.
Thus the expert believes that if current institutions in the “supercontinent” were to be opened to different traditions, similar revolutions may occur.
“These great giants in the neo-renaissance […] armed with an amalgamated cultural background, will surely propose breakthrough thinking and methodologies to overcome humanity challenges,” he affirmed.
Feng argued that OBOR is a great opportunity for China to transform itself at this point in time. “Before it was too poor, too disorganized. Finally, China is organized as a serious nation but then they need to think of how can China, as a nation, help humanity and not just for itself,” he explained.
“For China to rethink this transformation, it needs to set a new level of humility, which it never had,” added the expert.
The scholar is confident that China is capable of promoting various cultures to its peoples, however he doubted whether it has reached the point of wanting to promote this yet.
According to him, the most demanding task for China is how it could preserve its robust culture, while attempting to introduce and understand other philosophies.
Meanwhile, Feng said that Macau is one of the few places in Asia which understands the importance of cultural diversity, adding that the peninsula has a vast history which could influence OBOR ‘enormously.’
“OBOR cannot just be an economic and technological development. It will be development of China transforming its own thinking in the 21st century and Macau actually did that in the last 500 years,” he told the Times.
Further, he noted that higher education in the region has been improving significantly. He said that the local government probably realized that a great university would first be needed to diversify the economy.