In Lianyungang City, the "World Music Conference" seemed more like a fantasy idea than a big musical project. However, the initiator of the project has exclusively reached out to China.org.cn over the weekend, trying to clear some pending doubts that anyone may have.

Zhang Wenli

This man is Zhang Wenli, an editing director of the Symphony magazine and Chinese cultural curator. In the late 1990's, he co-organized a poetry praying campaign for world peace where over a hundred nation's leaders joined together under the name of the UN.

As China.org.cn learned in last December, World Music Conference and its supporting project World Music Town will make up the new city construction program. A headquarter Tower, a museum, a scenery park, a square, a giant opera, a world music university, TV tower, various particular music halls, supporting service center, and more will be built.

Billed as the "Musical Olympics," the World Music Conference will be a permanent presentation platform to hold bi-annual musical competition events, as well as a platform for music experts and fans to learn and communicate.

The plans were examined and later recognized by experts and officials, including Du Yue, the secretary-general of UNESCO National Commission of the People's Republic of China. They believed Lianyungang was capable of hosting the idea.

When planning for blank city areas, the imagination can run wild. On January 11, Lianyungang's tourism bureau sent the latest news to China.org.cn that the city has been chosen as one of the 100 most competitive cities for tourism at a first annual conference to discuss tourism competition abilities in China. This may add to Lianyungang's list of qualifications for developing the world music center, if they can use music's name to promote local tourism.

China.org.cn called Li Daoying, the city's vice secretary-general and director of the tourism bureau on February 5, to inquire how the project was progressing. Li said that everything seems to be going well and the plans have been handed in to the Jiangsu provincial government for discussion. When the provincial government and experts examine and pass the project, it will go on to the state department. However, this was not what had been promised by the Vice Mayor Zhu Hao, who said in December that they would submit it as a national project to the National Development and Reform Commission for approval as early as the next month. 

According to some documents of Lianyungang government, the city is the only one in China able to host this project because the city has so many acres of abandoned salt fields to recycle and make use of. Their big quantity of available lands needs no central or provincial government's approval. Municipal approval is enough.

"This is not necessarily true," Zhang Wenli countered, explaining that Beihai in Guangxi Province was his first thought. In fact, he brought the project to the Beihai government in the late 1990s. Beihai started preparing for the project over the course of a few years, but eventually gave it up due to financial problems and weak infrastructure.

Zhang Wenli believes that the 21st century will be a century of Chinese or, at the least, oriental culture. Like what Professor Ji Xianlin, a famous Chinese linguist, Sanskrit scholar and literary translator, has said, world culture has two systems, -- one is western, the other is eastern. The western system is based on analyzation; the eastern system is based on integration. When the western system can't resolve the practical problems it causes, the eastern system will be the way out. Zhang said it is the same for the art of music and thinks that western music has hit a dead-end.

World Music Conference, initially named International Musical Contest, was inspired by the Olympics, Zhang said. "The ultimate tenet of establishing the World Music Conference is to promote full development of the world's music and its industry, especially to narrow the gap between eastern and western music."

The idea seems too ambitious to be true. What can attract governments, music artists, experts, organizations and businessmen to put all the resources in Lianyungang, which is hardly at the center of anything. Zhang and government officials are constantly questioned by the city's lack of musical tradition as well. But Zhang is still confident in his own solution.

"Lianyungang is perfect. World Music Conference just needs a white paper," he explained. "It's a platform, and it will be easy to form a city theme."

He said various so-called international musical contests and awards, such as Russia's International Tchaikovsky Competition, Poland's International Chopin Piano Competition, Vienna's International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition and even the United States' Grammy Awards, are actually competitions of one nation or under certain non-government organizations' names, though they are enlarging their channels, scales and categories. Zhang believes that it is now time to establish the top platform above all of these to enhance global musical communication.

Through his contacts, he had sent several letters about this to UNESCO in the early 2000s.  China.org.cn has obtained several exclusive scanned mail replies from UNESCO to him, urging him to send this project by official channels through China's UNESCO National Commission, which approved the idea last December. Zhang Wenli said UNESCO officials are very interested, including Koïchiro Matsuura, the director general of UNESCO. He thinks that UNESCO wants a grand global event under its name, since it cannot own Olympics, World Cup and World Expo.

After Beihai abandoned the project, Zhang Wenli met Li Daoying at a culture forum in 2001. Li was interested in the project and persuaded Zhang to move the project to Lianyungang, which was eager to boost its economy and city construction.

In June 2005, Zhang Wenli wrote a letter to Li Yuanchao, secretary of the Jiangsu Provincial CPC Committee and then got a positive response in July. Soon later, Chen Xin, the president of Thailand-based Huanglongtai Group, and many other international investing companies became interested and registered a new company for the project. They signed cooperation agreements with the Lianyungang government on August 27.

However, the pace of the project will not be fast as it will be reviewed again and again by multi-level governments, then China and its experts will have to persuade all the governments in the world to make Lianyungang the world music center. It will no doubt take many years and it's impossible to hold the first conference in 2009, as Lianyungang officials expected, Zhang said. He also realized that it is indeed difficult to persuade other nations, especially a superpower such as America which has a much more developed music industry than China, to participate in the project and events.

So, he compromised and said that his real thought is to establish the highest competition platform, and it doesn't really matter where it is built. China can lend a hand for this, just like United States lent a hand for the United Nations in New York. Lianyungang is just a choice for the entire world and the city is trying to be the one. Zhang said China shouldn't complete the project alone. All the governments should discuss and review the matters related to the World Music Conference, and then agree to co-sign a manifesto to put the music center on the land that they all agree on. It could be Lianyungang, and it also could be a place in Australia, America, Africa, or Europe.

Another document exclusively obtained by China.org.cn show a calculation that Zhang and his partners once figured out. They expected the first music conference, if successfully held, would earn a net gross income of 2.3 billon yuan (US$296.7 million), attracting 300,000 visitors. He also believes that the platform could enhance the development for the Third World countries' musical culture, especially those in the ancient African lands.

(China.org.cn by staff reporter Zhang Rui, February 15, 2007)