Changing the face of China
- By Wang Quanbao
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China.org.cn, November 7, 2011
CNW: On which area of cultural construction do we need to do more?
Yi: There are two points that deserve our attention: one is internal communication. Our cultural products and services should promote social morals and cohesion while meeting the public needs. We have made efforts on this part, such as selecting moral models and setting positive examples. But there are still weak points. For example, we sometimes consider the tangible benefits of cultural works like the box office sales, TV commercial revenue, book sales price and added value to the cultural industry as equal to the intangible benefits. Thus phenomena like vulgar content and currying favor of the public have appeared.
Another area for improvement is in the promotion of Chinese culture overseas. In recent years, we have gained some achievements from the strategy of "going out". However, thus far, our strategy has revolved around Chinese language education, and aspects of traditional Chinese culture including acrobatics, tai chi, kung fu and calligraphy. These products just give an abstract picture of Chinese culture to foreign audience. We need more specific and vivid stories on the modern China and the Chinese people.
CNW: How can we transform China's cultural achievements into soft power that will build on our comprehensive national strength?
Yi: China's cultural development is now at a critical juncture. We must break the bottleneck to transfer our culture's core values and cultural theories into influential soft power through sound and detailed practices. Concurrently, we must understand that creativity, above economic benefit, is the road for us to reach the goal of becoming a major cultural power.
CNW: Which problems do we need to be concerned with when promoting Chinese culture overseas?
Yi: We need to avoid emphasizing the past rather than the present in our promotion of Chinese culture. Traditional culture can provide us with rich sources, but it could not solve our current problems. China's development has occurred mostly from Chinese people's own innovations.
When presenting modern China and Chinese people to the world, we must focus on our innovations. Otherwise, the more we broadcast China's traditional cultural heritage, the less our modern cultural creativity impresses the world.
CNW: How can we spread our values through media publicity and artistic creativity?
Yi: We need more publicity on the advancement of our social systems. In addition, we need fresh, specific and vivid "China stories." We need to consider how to present the Chinese people's good image in a specific, lively and diversified way. This means not only presenting the government official's wisdom and innovations in handling international affairs, but also presenting China's entrepreneurs' ability to grasp the opportunity and their credibility. It means not only presenting the charm and creativity of successful, famous people, but also the diligence and hard work of ordinary citizens.
We have to learn to tell our stories in a vivid way, while avoiding tedious moralizing. For example, in reporting the story of basketball star Yao Ming, it's not enough to present how successful he was in sports. We need to cover the contributions of the "Yao Ming phenomenon" to the building of the modern Chinese image. In that sense, Yao's diligence, intelligence, tolerance and caring have changed the Chinese image in the minds of many across the world.
In this country of 1.3 billion Chinese people, dynamic "China stories" happen every day. If every movie, TV series, program and literary creation could highlight modern Chinese cultural values, and every company, international cooperation and cultural exchange could portray China's image in a positive light, the world would see the true glamour and strength of modern China.
All in all, there is still a long way to go for China to become a major cultural power. We need to change our patterns of cultural development as we did for our economic system in order to rise to the next level.
(This post is first published in Chinese and translated and condensed by Li Shen)
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn
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