Chapter 49 China's foreign strategy must focus on both hard power and soft power

Can we discuss cultural issues in depth, discuss the relationship between economic rise and cultural rise, and discuss the role of culture in China's foreign strategy? The relationship between economic rise and cultural rise should be complementary.There can be no cultural rise without economic rise.With economic rise, there cannot be no cultural rise.With the enhancement of comprehensive national strength and the improvement of international status, China's foreign strategy must pay attention to both hard power and soft power resources, so as to ensure the realization of the goal of the strategic opportunity period.Emphasizing the role of culture in foreign strategy can enable China to appear on the international stage with a good image, enhance the attractiveness, persuasion and influence of China's foreign policy, and make other countries actively support China's attitude, which will achieve twice the result with half the effort .

So, what is the cultural stance of our country? China's cultural standpoint is consistent with that of most developing countries, that is: learn from each other and prosper together, and do not exclude the cultures of other nations.That is to support cultural diversity.This cultural diversity comes from the diversity of the world, which is the basis for the existence of human society and the precious wealth of human society.We stand for maintaining the diversity of the world.All civilizations, social systems and development paths in the world should respect each other, learn from each other's strengths in competition and comparison, and develop together while seeking common ground while reserving differences.

What is the point of advocating for diversity? Promoting cultural diversity makes a lot of sense.First of all, it conforms to the real situation and development trend of the world.The history of mankind has changed from isolation to communication and integration, and cultural diversity has promoted human progress.When encountering various unpredictable challenges in the future, diverse cultures may provide different solutions to protect human beings from disasters.Second, all cultures have their own value and are equal.All cultures should respect each other, learn from each other's strengths and seek common development.A firm rejection of any kind of cultural centrism should be unquestionable today.At present, it is especially necessary to oppose Western cultural centrism and American cultural centrism.Since Western powers implemented colonialism to the whole world, Western cultural centrism has become a cultural weapon for conquest and expansion.In the era of post-colonialism, Western culture-centrism has become more concealed, often appearing in the guise of "universal value theory", but its essence has not changed, and the dominance of Western culture in the world must still be maintained.Among them, the theory of American cultural center is the most aggressive, and it should arouse vigilance.There are also many people in developing countries who advocate cultural centrism. Although some of them aim to resist Western cultural centrism, cultural centrism is still wrong and harmful.The stance of cultural diversity is clearly a major advance over cultural centrism.

Does the stance of advocating cultural diversity also have its inherent limitations? The standpoint of cultural diversity also has its inherent limitations, and only a full and profound understanding of it can make up for its shortcomings.First, the recognition of cultural diversity is in serious contradiction to the current nation-state based international system.After the Second World War, a series of nation-states was confidently established.Although the Cold War pitted the two camps, the conceptions of nation-states and social progress were similar.Within the nation-state, it emphasizes national unity and national identity.However, the transnational distribution of an ethnic group and the presence of multiple ethnic groups within a country are common phenomena.

At that time, governments promoted a relatively simplified "one nationalism" and cultural diversity was ignored.After the 1990s, in many places, the nation was divided by culture, and the country was more inclined to regionalization and globalization economically and politically, and the nation-state was generally questioned.At the same time, the one-sided emphasis, exploitation and mobilization of cultural diversity is destructive, not only causing conflicts and civil wars in some countries, but also spilling over to the region, leading to wider instability and instability.As pointed out by the American scholar Crawford Young, the renewed emphasis on cultural diversity is to discover obstacles to nationalism and national integration, and to understand ethnic conflicts from the perspective of national psychology and national culture.

Does cultural diversity in the post-Cold War era seriously affect the existence of nation-states? Although a new situation of cultural diversity emerged after the end of the Cold War, the nation-state is still the most important and basic factor in the modern international system, and will continue to exist for a long time to come.For developing countries, the task of nation-building and national identity has not been completed, and tribalism, nationalism, localism and separatism are still strong, and even threaten the existence and security of the country.The systems of developed countries are quite mature, and they are able to deal with the challenges of cultural diversity relatively calmly and implement policies to encourage cultural diversity, while developing countries still have difficulties.In this case, China in its peaceful rise must deal with the contradiction between ethnic integration and cultural diversity.On the one hand, the people must be educated to be loyal to the country, to share the noble goals of the country, and to be proud of their citizenship; on the other hand, they must recognize cultural diversity and recognize the richness of national, local, religious, and ideological schools.It should be noted that Chinese culture embraces all the above-mentioned diversity, and encouraging and fostering the full development of diverse cultures in the whole of Chinese culture is an indispensable part of the whole.It is one-sided, narrow and wrong to regard Chinese culture only as Han culture or Confucian culture.It is also wrong to forget the local culture of Taiwan.What deserves more attention in my country's foreign strategy is the sensitivity of transnational nations, religions and cultures.The definition of nation-state is a recent thing, but the formation of nation, religion and culture has a long history, and the two do not coincide.If this issue is not handled properly, it will arouse emotional resentment and even affect relations between countries.Secondly, cultural diversity emphasizes that all cultures are equal, but this alone is not enough, and it cannot make people make judgments on various things.One of China's diplomatic principles is to decide policies based on the merits of things. How to judge the merits and demerits obviously requires the use of value judgments. Cultural diversity does not provide a standard for people to judge.As we all know, society develops from a low level to a high level, and culture also develops from a low level to a high level. Today's differences in modernization also include differences in cultural modernization.The historical differences of cultures are the era standard for judging the advanced and backward cultures.As a developing country, China certainly has great sympathy and support for other developing countries, but it cannot ignore the advancement and backwardness of culture.We should also face up to the cultural backwardness in developing countries, and we should seriously reflect and criticize the cultural roots of the ugly phenomenon in China.Only after the baptism of modernization will the historical reasons for cultural backwardness fade away.

When I went to visit the Acrobatics Museum in the Wuqiao "Jianghu Cultural City" in Cangzhou, Hebei, I found that in the preface signed by a former leader of a provincial party committee, "acrobatics" and "advanced culture" were compared and equated. It seems that this leader doesn't know much about what "advanced culture" is.In fact, there are essences and dross within every culture, and sometimes they are even mixed together, making it difficult to distinguish.For example, the values ​​of loyalty and filial piety in Chinese culture, loyalty to the country, and filial piety to parents are naturally the essence of culture, but it is also an indisputable fact that foolish loyalty harms the country and foolish filial piety strangles human nature.How to distinguish the essence and dross of each culture?Does advocating cultural diversity mean accepting both the best and the worst?Obviously not.Cultural diversity does not provide a standard for judgment and distinction. Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, and the important thought of "Three Represents" should be used as the standard, and the scientific concept of development should be used as the standard to judge which are the essence worth learning and learning from. , which are the dross that must be criticized and discarded.The criterion for judging is not the West or the East, developed or developing countries, but whether the culture is advanced or backward.Generally speaking, people tend to give positive comments to their own culture, but they don’t recognize or underestimate the defects, or even think it is beautiful. Therefore, it is very necessary to have an open attitude towards culture and to understand oneself in comparison with other cultures.

Do we also need to talk about unity when we talk about diversity?After all, Mao Zedong also talked about the particularity of contradictions and the universality of contradictions in "On Contradiction". This is natural.Human beings need diversity as well as unity.Giving universality to a certain culture is unacceptable to countries because there is no evidence in history that there is a universal cultural pattern that each country has to follow in order to be successful.Conversely, if particularity is emphasized to an inappropriate degree, it will also create a huge obstacle to the exchange of ideas from different cultures.Thorough diversity insists on the uniqueness of each culture, at most it can only admit the differences of different cultures, it cannot explain more things, at most it just puts all cultures on the same level, and this will run into a wall in the face of complex facts, because the facts They cannot be equated.More importantly, over-emphasizing the specificity of each culture can only lead to a dangerous situation where cultural conflict is imminent.Therefore, according to the UNESCO Panel of Experts, human beings have reached the limit of diversity, and the lack of integration will actually arbitrarily impose some kind of uniformity on people, thereby compromising diversity.There is no growth, evolution and development in the deepest sense without integration.Unity is not identity, but a leap from diversity.It gives every culture its historical opportunity.As Professor Uno Shigeaki of Japan pointed out, every culture should be towards the direction of all mankind while maintaining its own self, making its particularity more universal.Universalization cannot be like what the Western powers have done, using their strength to make their own particularity the universality of human beings, nor can it be imposed on others, as if it has some kind of destiny.Various cultures will definitely contact, influence and infiltrate each other continuously in solving the common problems of mankind, and finally form universality.All countries should establish a common sense of pursuing universality and seize the opportunity of cultural self-renewal.At present, China's foreign strategy still lacks the awareness of the combination of unity and diversity. When China rises peacefully and increasingly plays a greater role in the region and the world, whether it has this awareness will produce different results.Only the values ​​of Western culture have reached a certain degree of universality, and in fact, every culture has the potential for universalization.If China, India, Egypt, South Africa, Brazil and other countries contribute their own excellent values ​​after cultural modernization and become the common values ​​of mankind, the unity of world culture will be greatly improved.