by Lin Bao 22.03.2023

President of China Xi Jinping delivered a speech, proposing the Global Civilization Initiative. For the first time at the High-level Dialogue between the Communist Party of China and World Political Parties took place on March 15th . This is the third global initiative that China has proposed to the world for three consecutive years, following the Global Development Initiative in 2021 and the Global Security Initiative in 2022, while also giving a Chinese proposal. The focus has shifted from development to security to civilization, opening up a new path for coun-tries to live in harmony and cooperate in development amidst the century of changes that are accelerating in evolution.

The Global Civilization Initiative includes the core concept of “Four Shared Initiatives”. The main premise is to “jointly advocate respect for the diversity of civilizations in the world”. The Global Civilization Initiative proposes to “adhere to equality, mutual appreciation, dialogue and tolerance of civilizations, and to transcend the barriers between civilizations with civilizational exchange, the clash of civilizations with mutual appreciation, and the superiority of civilizations with civilizational tolerance”, in rational response to the “theory of civilizational superiority” and “theory of clash of civilizations” of the West in the past centuries. The Global Civilization Initiative proposes to “promote the common values of all humankind” and “understand with a broad mind the values of different civilizations, refrain from imposing our own values and models on others, and refrain from ideological confrontation”. “Jointly advocate the importance of civilization inheritance and innovation”, which is the awareness of unbroken Chinese civilization and the expand of cultural and historical self-confidence from near too far. “Jointly advocating the strengthening of international humanities exchanges and cooperation and exploring the construction of a global civilization dialogue and cooperation network” is the concrete implementation path of the global civilization initiative. The road is long and obstructed, but the journey will come. In the future, exchange and dialogue among countries for common progress should be the mainstream.

In today’s world, multiple challenges and crises are intertwined and superimposed, the world economy is struggling to recover, the development gap is widening, the ecological environment continues to deteriorate, and the Cold War mentality still exists, requiring all countries in the world to work together to deal with it.

The right way is to insist on equality, mutual appreciation, dialogue and tolerance of civilizations, to transcend civilizational barriers with civilizational exchanges, to transcend civilizational conflicts with mutual appreciation and to transcend civilizational superiority with civilizational tolerance; to understand the value connotation of different civilizations with a broad mind, not to impose one’s own values and models on others and not to engage in ideological confrontation; to fully explore the contemporary value of the history and culture of each country and to promote the excellent traditional culture of each country in the modernization process. It is the right way to fully explore the contemporary values of the history and culture of all countries and promote the innovative development of the good traditional culture of all countries in the process of modernization.

Guest author:
Lin Bao is a young scholar and international relations commentator specializing in political science and international relations. He is good at international issues research and political analysis, and his research direction is the strategic relations and foreign policy research of major countries