EPILOGUE
CULTURAL
ISSUES IN THE CONTEXT OF
ECONOMIC
GLOBALIZATION
Economic globalization has formed two parallel and
contrary cultural trends. It has not only created the current industrial and
popular cultures in the world and brought about the acceptance to a certain
extent of some Western values. But also it has promoted cultural nationalization
and localization and reaffirmed and protected the unique meaning of each
culture. Cultural intercourse cannot be obstructed, like mercury rushing down.
World culture is also constantly spreading outward and extending its influence.
Only by opening to the outside world, can the objective of China’s cultural
development be achieved.
This is no longer the colonial era. Whether the
thinking and policy of cultural hegemony can work depends to a great extent on
the response of developing countries. To achieve “cultural security” by
closing doors is not only impossible technologically, but also will run counter
to people’s desire. Only by facing the world with an open mentality and
strengthening the national culture through extensive cultural exchanges can one
resist foreign invasion.
Western capitalist countries have taken the lead in
realizing modernization and have used some of the methods of their opposition,
the socialist countries. On the contrary, for socialist countries it is far from
enough to learn from capitalist countries and draw lessons from them. China’s
modernization will not take the path of capitalism, but this does not mean
casting away the cream of Western culture. Only by pursuing a policy of
opening-up, can we resist and criticize the reactionary propaganda of hostile
domestic and foreign forces and various decadent, superstitious and pornographic
ideologies and views.
Economic transnational development and
internationalization can be traced back one century or more, while economic
globalization began after WWII. Trade contacts and mutual investment between
developed countries increased tremendously, various international economic
mechanisms began to take shape and transnational corporations became the engines
of world economic growth. Meanwhile, large numbers of developing countries
entered the international economic system and all the countries interpenetrated
and depended upon each other and tended towards economic integration. By the
1980s, economic globalization appeared in an embryonic form. Since the 1990s the
international economy and politics have undergone historical changes and
economic globalization has proceeded with accelerated momentum. Transnational
distribution of essential factors of production reinforced the interdependent
global system of division of labor, and information technology has promoted
global capital flow and technology transfer, causing in turn new changes
according to the laws of economic cycles. Today, economic globalization has
become an irresistible tide. Observing the current and future trends of the
times, economic globalization cannot but be its basic characteristic and broad
context; it must be the starting point for analyzing any important issue.
Therefore, in recent years, not a few articles have
put forward the concepts of “cultural globalization” and “political
globalization”, or more concisely, “globalization”. In the author’s
opinion, they are improper.
The suffix: “-ization” means from beginning to
end and from inside to outside. But there is no such “globalized” culture.
Of course, economic globalization is only in its initial stage. The extent of
globalization depends on the difference in the participation of countries and
regions. The economy of many countries has not even entered within the scope of
economic globalization. But the foundation of globalization has been laid and a
global market and network have begun to take shape. The state of culture is
different from this. Another meaning of the suffix: “-ization” is process.
Just as modernity is a state, modernization is a process. The reasons why
economic globalization can be realized are: Firstly, only by establishing a
worldwide market economic system and integrating the world market can economic
internationalization and integration be expanded across the world. Secondly, the
information technology revolution has promoted the formation of a global
economic network. Therefore, the process of economic globalization has been
expanding and deepening. The situation of culture is different. Though in the
past half century, the frequency of cultural exchanges between various countries
in the world has exceeded any previous period in the history and cultural
absorption and integration has been unprecedented, cultural difference has not
been gradually eliminated. Wars for nation and religion (culture in a broad
sense) occur also after economic development. In some parts of the world, people
drive cars to herd sheep and cattle and conduct Internet transactions, but they
still conform to the caste system and polygamy. Though cultural development is
influenced by economic globalization, it is not in direct interrelation with the
latter. It has a more complicated inherent developmental logic.
Economic globalization has profound impact on
culture, however, and current research on this is quite insufficient. The
impacts can only be summed up as follows: economic globalization has formed two
parallel and contrary cultural trends. The first trend is that it has created
current industrial culture and popular culture in the world and has caused some
Western values to be accepted to a certain extent. In previous times, the elite
culture always dominated one country’s cultural process and a specific tension
was maintained between the elite and the popular culture. But industrialization
and modernization have enabled large-scale mass consumption, including cultural
consumption. The original tension between elite and popular cultures has been
completely destroyed. Popular culture has surged on an unprecedented scale and
simply submerged the elite culture in quantity. In the past, only phoenixes
seemed qualified to flutter, while today sparrows and crows blot out the sky and
the sun. The popular culture has such characteristics as superficiality,
commercial and mechanical nature, focused on the stimulation of the senses. It
has ridden the wind of economic globalization and spread quickly across the
world. In the past, the popular cultures in various countries also had strong
national and local distinctive features. But now the sparrows and crows
throughout the world all sing karaoke and dance to music machines. No matter how
the U.S. and the Soviet Union confronted each other in the Cold War era, or no
matter how tense the US relations with countries such as Iran, the young people
in the U.S., the Soviet Union, Iran and even other countries follow similar
fashions in jeans, disco and hair-dying. No matter how the intellectual elite
turn up their noses at the popular culture, they cannot but face up to its
positive aspects in breaking the monopoly of the elite on culture and opening up
vast spaces for the masses to create culture. The challenge is to absorb the
strong points of the popular culture, overcome its weak points and enable the
attractive forces behind the elite culture to join in guiding popular culture.
It is deeply significant that economic globalization
has promoted the dissemination of Western values. Western countries have set
forth a series of values such as democracy, freedom, human rights, market
competition, legal contracts and individualism. Though elements of these values
exist also in other cultures, the modernized abstraction of these values has
been completed in the West. The enhancement of these values corresponds with the
Western modernization process, and they have gradually been improved in the
process.
When developing countries began their efforts to
catch up with and surpass Western countries in modernization they had to
recognize that they must learn and absorb some cultural values of the West,
while introducing its science, technology and management experience.
However, modernization does not mean Westernization.
It is on the basis of their native cultures that various countries must learn
Western culture and use it for reference. Western values are of universal
significance to a certain extent, otherwise they cannot be accepted by other
countries. Economic globalization has promoted more developing countries to
accelerate their modernization, and newly industrialized countries (regions)
have set an example of catching up with, and surpassing, Western countries and
have provided experience in this respect. After choosing the path of
modernization, developing countries have more consciously accepted some Western
cultural values. Because of the global currency of the popular culture and the
dissemination of Western values, some people have asserted that economic
globalization must bring about cultural globalization. However this assertion is
one-sided.
The reasons are: firstly, there is another tendency
in the impact of economic globalization on culture, that is, promotion of
cultural nationalization and localization and reaffirmation and protection of
the unique meaning of each culture. The inundation of popular culture and the
acceptance of Western values have evoked heated debates in almost all
non-Western countries. In this all trends of thought have appeared from the
“school of Westernization” to the “school of nativism”. Given that many
cultures in the colonial era were suppressed under Western gunboat and
missionary policies, developing countries are now able to protect their own
interests, including their cultures with state power while being aware that
closing door can only protect backwardness and that only opening-up can help
cultural rejuvenation and development. What is more hopeful is that some
developing countries (regions) have not only succeeded in catching up in
economy, but have found a way to answer the difficult problems of absorbing
external cultures while keeping native cultures or nativizing external cultures
and modernizing native cultures. These are two aspects of the one process.
Weaving together the two concur and complement one another.1 In this
way, the native culture is rejuvenated while being retained, and its
dissemination and inheritance are promoted. It will neither be extinct nor
assimilated and contained, but greater stress will be put on the characteristics
of national development. Modernization as a general concept will be expressed in
a specific form through the unique infiltration of the national culture. In
fact, it is a good example that although Western countries have reached a very
high level of modernization, they still retain their respective national
cultural features. Asian, African and Latin American countries are so numerous
and diverse in culture that it is still less possible for them to reach
unanimity.
Secondly, the formulation and expression of
humankind’s common cultural values require that various cultures, especially
non-Western cultures, contribute their excellent values. In some sense Western
values have many strong points, but they have shortcomings as do any cultural
values. For instance, the unchecked spread of individual freedom has caused
social problems; over-competition has triggered contradictions in interpersonal
relations; attending only to conquering nature has resulted in its retaliation;
and strong religious mentalities have obstructed intercultural absorption and
tolerance. These shortcomings can not be remedied by the Western culture itself.
In their own processes of modernization, developing countries are learning from
and absorbing some Western values, but they are also developing what is useful
and discarding what is not in their native cultural values in order to
counteract the inadequacy of Western values and enhance their own. This is of
universal significance to countries all over the world.
Lastly, only cultural diversification can ensure that
humankind not be destroyed should a unitary “cultural gene” face future
challenges. At the turn of the century, humankind made unprecedented progress,
but also met unprecedented problems, for example, the population explosion,
ecological deterioration, environmental pollution, frequent wars, ignorance and
backwardness, the wide gap between the rich and the poor, severe crimes,
violation of moral norms and the break-up of the family. The new scientific and
technological revolution brought more expectation and hope to humankind, but
also concealed huge crises: e.g., the information network has narrowed the
distance of time and space, but also bred online crime and speculation. What the
Southeast Asian financial storm showed may be only the tip of the iceberg. The
breakthrough in biological technology will bring about unexpected glad tidings
to the life of humankind, but will also cause confusion and perplexity in law
and ethics. A greater threat lies in unforeseen changes. Various national
cultures are extremely rich and varied and are a vast storehouse of experience
and wisdom with which humankind can handle crises; only by drawing on this
experience from the historical cultures can humankind forge ahead. If culture is
“globalized” or “Westernized,” as some people have said, it will be a
very sad future for humankind.
The impossibility of “cultural globalization” has
been considered above. Now, greater stress will be laid on what can be done,
because the attitude of people is also very important. When all cherish more the
garden of national cultures under the condition of economic globalization and
make more efforts to explore, develop, transform and enhance these cultures,
then cultural diversification will develop in a healthy manner.
“Economic globalization” does not mean
“cultural globalization”. Entering the world market is also not equal to
“falling fully in line with Western culture”. However, in the ideological
circles of developing countries views about this are very confused because there
are huge differences among the cultures of the world. Western culture as a
strong culture is aggressive while the newly emerging national cultures are in a
weak state. How to understand this phenomenon has attracted more and more
attention.
When Western powers moved across the world with the
power of thunder, they destroyed the original social economy through trade and
dumping, besides conquest by force; they negated and changed local values and
moral concepts with Christianity, education and law. Westerners capitalized on
the superiority of European cultures and its ability effectively to set new
standards throughout the world. They assumed themselves to be the teachers of
other nations in spirit and morals. Colonists arbitrarily determined the destiny
of other nations on the premise of egoism based on their own standards. Power
politics was swollen with cultural arrogance: the “European heartland
theory” or “Western heartland theory” are of long standing. Though an
undisguised preaching of Western superiority is criticized also in the West, its
influence is deeply rooted.
At present, Western research and its publicity on
universal values are powerful and dynamic. By referring to Western cultural
values as “universal” and “common in the world” they obscure the
particularity of Western culture. According to Roland Robertson, a British
scholar, globalization can be regarded as a dual process including
universalization of particularity and particularization of universality in the
most general sense.2 With economic globalization, some Western
scholars desire urgently to universalize Western culture. This author holds that
some Western values, such as democracy, human rights and freedom, have a certain
universality; otherwise they could not be accepted. But, it is completely wrong
to regard the path of the West as a model and impose it on others.
During the Cold War, fierce struggles between
political systems and ideologies covered equally fierce cultural struggles. As
socialism was at a low ebb after the Cold War, Western cultural hegemony caused
a great clamor. Especially the U.S., the sole superpower in the world, aspired
again and again to change the world with its values. President George W. Bush
took the expansion of U.S. political values as the main component of security.
Former President Clinton listed the spread of U.S.-style democracy as one of the
three pillars of U.S. diplomacy. Strategic
Review 1998 of the U.S. University of National Defense pointed out in
analyzing the Asia-Pacific situation that almost all the countries in the region
had accepted the economic values of core countries such as the U.S., and that
this was very favorable for the promotion of economic relations in this region.
However, some countries continued to resist and even refused to accept values of
democratic politics, so doubts and concerns existed in the relations between
core countries and other countries. Thus the spread by the U.S. of its cultural
values is aimed at maximizing its national interests and realizing its hegemonic
strategy of “leading the world”. Socialism being at a low ebb further
enabled Western cultural values to exercise strong influence in the political
system. Some declared “the end of history,” while others predicted the
extinction of socialism. The U.S. Government’s definition of the era is
“market and democracy” and “security and order”. In fact, it holds that
the capitalist system will last forever.
The strong force of Western culture is also embodied
in the richness of its material base and its absolute superiority in the
cultural industry, products and market. In the late 1990s, the world film
box-office value was about US$15.5 billion, in which the U.S. accounted for over
two thirds, US$10.5 billion. The telecommunications industry is the U.S. largest
exporting industry, while the film industry ranks fourth. This shows the
strength of the cultural industry. What Coca Cola and McDonald market is not
only food and beverage, but also the meaning of culture and the lifestyle added
to them. Hollywood’s swift and fierce attack has been moving forward
successfully and their products are enjoyed by millions across the world.
Japan’s Fuji Sankei Communication Group ranks first among the world’s five
largest mass media groups; its annual income reaches US$10 billion. After 1998,
it has been forging ahead towards “complete digitalization” and has
established international digitalization media jointly with such media groups as
Australia’s Murdoch Media. In the emerging networks, over 80 percent of
information come from Western countries and only 5 percent originate from
Chinese. Western countries provide over 90 percent of online service, while the
Chinese mainland provides only 1 percent. The weakness of developing countries
is not only because they lack strong economic strength and capital input, but
also reveals that their greatest shortcoming scientific and technological
backwardness and dearth of human resources.
The strong cultural force of Western countries
dominates the world because of the support of the international political and
economic systems they led. To introduce cultural concepts, ideas, principles and
values all over the world, the guarantee of the system is of the utmost
importance. The system uses organizational force and legal recognition to create
the situation. They compel others to submit without firing a shot and, even if
using force, they “have just cause”. After the victory in WWII, Roosevelt
and Churchill designed the United Nations, putting the spirit of the “Atlantic
Charter” into effect. To prevent the economic crisis in 1930 from resurfacing,
various countries set up a series of organizations at the Bretton Woods
Conference. Later, there were arranged such systems as GATT, WTO and APEC.
Though theoretically, in organizations such as the UN, all the countries are
equal, in reality, strength always determines the weight of speech. Western
countries are superior in the system, because they have initiated most of the
fundamental principles of the international law and the world system and they
dominate the current world order. System innovation and its original culture can
be traced to the same origin, and are well reasoned. To pursue their own systems
and cultures in international relations, developing countries must take into
account the existing international law and the world system, and not come into
conflicts with them. Only by so doing can their systems and cultures be
accepted. As the cultures of developing countries and Western culture do not
derive from the same system, the integration of the two requires a great deal of
work. At the turn of the century, people pay close attention to the reform of
international political and economic organizations to adapt them to the changes
in era. The key lies in putting forward their own new ideas and principles and
seeking a path for their collective recognition, as well as exploring the
feasibility of systematic arrangements. This is a severe test for the cultures
of developing countries.
The fact that the cultures of developing countries
are weak is undisputed; this will not change for a considerable period. Under
these circumstances, “wholesale Westernization” is not desirable and extreme
cultural nationalism is also very harmful to developing countries. Some
intellectuals advanced the concept of “cultural colonialism”, “cultural
imperialism” or “neo-colonialism” in a broader sense. This deserves
careful analysis. No doubt, there really exist cultural hegemonic trends of
thought in Western countries which sometimes are reflected in the policies of
some countries. But, today is no longer a colonial era. Whether cultural
hegemonic thinking and policies can work depends, to a great extent, on the
reaction of developing countries. “Cultural security” through closing doors
is not only impossible technologically, but also will run counter to people’s
desire. Only by facing the world with an open mentality and reinforcing the
building of national cultures through extensive cultural exchanges can we resist
foreign invasion.
Furthermore, although the concepts of
“colonialism” and “imperialism” are borrowed, cultural issues and
economic and political systems differ in characteristic manners. Political and
economic systems can be clearly divided into capitalist and socialist systems,
planned and market economy. However, it is not easy to judge whether a country
is reduced to the status of a colony by means of quantitative and qualitative
analysis, and, given the basic termination of the colonial system, whether the
culture of a developing country is reduced to the status of a “colony”.
Spoken and written language is really an important mark of culture, but many
developing countries have had to inherit the legacy of the colonial period and
use English, French and Spanish. Meanwhile, their governments have been
protecting the national spoken and written languages. In some developing
countries, the multi-ethnic, multi-national and multi-linguistic state has
sometimes made the official designation of one official national language
harmful, so they cannot but adopt Western languages.
Perhaps more important is ideological identification,
cultural values and the moral system. Through education reflecting national
liberation and independence, the national identity and pride of newly emerging
nations have been greatly enhanced. This is basic. Of course, there exists the
trend of urban youth pursuing Western culture and imitating Western lifestyle,
but their proportion in the population is worth research. It is also an
universal phenomenon that young people return to their mainstream culture after
a “traitorous period”. Developing countries have different national
conditions. Only by analyzing the specific situations of various countries can
one gain a correct view. Without this, this author can only report that of the
developing countries she has visited no country can be called in general a
cultural “colony”. India was one of the colonies with the longest history in
Asia and English is also the official language, but the national pride and
patriotic feeling of the Indians are very strong; national culture goes back to
ancient times and is well preserved. South Korean leaders from Kim Young-Sam to
Kim Dae-jung have stressed the learning of Western values, but the South Korean
Government and people have been rather successful in developing what is useful
and discarding what is not in the traditional culture. Therefore, national
cultural pride has struck root in the hearts of the people. Vietnamese
characters have been Latinized. Though undergoing long-standing colonial rule,
war destruction and system alternation, continuity in the inheritance and
renovation of its culture is very clear. There are not only influences of
Chinese and Buddhist cultures, but also vestiges of Western, especially French,
culture, while retaining characteristics of Vietnamese culture. In sum, national
independence is a strong guarantee against cultural “colonization”.
Speaking of strong culture, we generally refer to
Western culture, because the cultural values of Western countries are relatively
almost identical and they are quite different from developing countries on
issues such as freedom, human rights and democracy. But, if carefully observed,
we may find that Western countries are not monolithic; they differ greatly in
culture and their foreign cultural policies are widely divergent. The French
Government has stipulated that French language must be used during at least 40%
of time in French television and broadcasting programmes, and Hollywood’s
films can account at most for one fourth of the films shown in 4500 cinemas. The
Canadian Government advocates a “mosaic culture” at home, that is, each
ethnic culture is a part of Canadian culture and the government will not compel
it to be assimilated. After driving US “country music radio stations” out of
Canada in 1995, the Canadian Government began to put into effect C-55 bill in
1999, which stipulates that Canadian enterprises are not allowed to advertise in
foreign periodicals distributed in Canada, lest a high fine be imposed on them.
The protection of national culture has been attained through cutting off the
financial resources of US periodicals in Canada. Therefore, if the leader of
cultural hegemony is the U.S., other Western countries may also share common
concerns with developing countries in opposing US cultural hegemony. For this
reason, specific research should be done on the cultural policy of each Western
country, industry, market and relations with developing countries. We will
firmly oppose what is really cultural hegemony, but deal differently with what
is not.
Besides, there are normal contacts between countries
and also various non-governmental cultural exchanges. The U.S., the sole
superpower, is no exception. To fulfil their historical task of modernization,
developing countries must open to the outside world and absorb all the
achievements of human civilization. They cannot forget this in resisting
cultural hegemony. If they stand still on the path of modernization, this will
fundamentally endanger their national destiny and prospects; it will be
impossible for their national cultures to be prosperous and vigorous. Culture is
related to all the activities of humankind: artistic, social, political,
educational, religious, spiritual and economic. It has a broad tolerance. If
opposition to “cultural colonialism” is pursued, it may impact all the
foreign contacts and will certainly impair a country’s opening-up and
development.
Hollywood films are an example. In the perspective of
film producers, film production is an economic activity aimed at gaining
box-office values. When exporting to other countries, films involve trade
contacts and cultural exchanges between countries. The artistic works reflect US
culture and values, but if there is no severe political prejudice or propagation
of sex and violence, cultural exchanges are more advantageous than
disadvantageous. We should educate the people to absorb nutrition and reject
dross in cultural comparison and trust people to have such ability. If a bad
work uses advanced scientific and technological means as well as strong
technique of artistic expression, we should allow professionals to learn the
technique so as to enhance their ability to disseminate our national culture.
In the final analysis, a cultural closed-door policy
is impossible and unacceptable. We must let the people enhance their cultural
discrimination so as to absorb the true, the good and the beautiful and discard
the false, the bad and the ugly. Only when the national cultural promotion
achieves remarkable success and blends the feelings of the people with a culture
geared to modernization, the world and the future, can the people have the
cultural backbone to enhance their discrimination and absorbency in the cultural
mix.
While recognizing the fact of strong and weak
cultures, weak cultures are not fully passive. Cultural intercourse can not be
obstructed, like mercury rushing down. Weak culture is also constantly spreading
outward and sending out its own influence. Swiftness of information and
communication has made it possible for any event occurring in any corner of the
world to become the focus of worldwide attention. The past hundreds of years
have witnessed Western attempts to conquer the world and migrate outward, but
now a trend of immigration from developing countries into Western countries
appears. Among the immigrants there are not only laborers, but increasingly
excellent talents in various fields. European scholars speak of the new change
from “world Europeanization” to “European universalization”. The past
one-way export of Western thinking has changed into a two-way dissemination of
Eastern and Western, as well as Southern and Northern, thinking.
Cultural interaction has produced some results in
international exchanges. For instance, on the highly controversial issue of
human rights developing countries have begun to attach importance to them, while
developed countries have had to recognize the rights to subsistence and
development as their basis, which has been written into UN conventions on human
rights. Not a few Western scholars used to look down upon East Asian culture,
but the very rapid development of this region has aroused the interest of the
world in East Asian culture and the blend of Eastern and Western cultures. If
developing countries devote themselves to modernization and culture building,
weak cultures can be changed into strong. Therefore, this author hold that the
concepts of strong culture and weak culture and the formulation of opposition to
cultural hegemony are more accurate than “cultural colonialism” and
“cultural imperialism”.
The aim of China’s cultural construction is very
clear; it is to build national, popular and scientific socialist culture in the
process of modernization. President Jiang Zemin pointed out that as long as the
Communist Party of China continues to represent the requirements of the
development of China’s advanced productive forces, the orientation of
China’s advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming
majority of the Chinese people, it can establish itself in a lasting
unassailable position. The “three represents” constitute an integral whole.
They are not only the fundamental guiding principle for Party building, but also
the strategic policy for developing a prosperous socialist culture. China’s
socialist cultural building will be a very long historical process. Its
background is the new scientific and technological revolution and economic
globalization which add fuel to the flames in the mix between various cultures
where strong culture and cultural hegemony are overbearing. Faced with severe
challenges, China’s cultural choice can be only a cultural opening in a wider
and deeper way. Economic globalization has made cultural closure almost
impossible and technically unrealizable. When satellite television covers the
whole world and the computer network links innumerable households, the mutual
cultural mix will become very specific. The Chinese Government’s decision to
join the WTO brings the Chinese market completely into line with the
international market. The developed countries’ commodities, including cultural
products, will enter into the Chinese market in quantity. Besides commodities,
cultural meanings, value trends and even ideological coloring will be
manifested. This is an unavoidable problem which lies ahead for the Chinese
people. Why must China answer it with a wider and deeper opening policy?
Firstly, only by opening, can China make use of the
opportunities created by economic globalization, overcome the challenges brought
about by economic globalization and fulfil the dual process of catching-up in
its modernization drive. In the past twenty years, China has made considerable
progress in catching-up in its industrialization; people now enjoy a higher
standard of living; they have progressed from simply having enough to eat and
wear. But before China had finished catching-up in industrialization, it began
to face the threat of being left farther behind in knowledge-based economic
competition. The new scientific and technological revolution has offered the
opportunity to leap-frog in development, for in a sense it can be said that all
the countries stand at the same starting line. On the other hand, developing
countries lack sufficient economic strength to support the knowledge industry,
are backward in science and technology, are weak in education and are not good
in the marketization and industrialization of scientific and technological
achievements. Only by opening up in a wider and deeper way, can they gain the
qualifications to begin running.
In fact, not only developing countries, but also
developed countries recognize that to win in the future, they can not depend
only on their own potentials but must possess the ability to fuse and absorb
external innovative thinking. In recent years, Western countries have
intensified the recruitment of senior talents in developing countries, and large
enterprises have sought out promising inventions all over the world. The
investment of transnational corporations in the Chinese mainland has expanded
from processing and manufacturing to knowledge-type service fields such as
training, retail, and research and development. The setting up of institutions
of research and development has become a new investment trend. Corporations such
as Intel, P&G, DuPont, Nokia, Ericsson and Matsushita have set up research
centers, technological development centers and laboratories in Beijing and
Shanghai. Their purposes are to seize China’s huge market and to make use of
its talents.
This will greatly advance the development of
China’s new high-tech industries, and the reform of its modes of management of
scientific research institutions. It will also nurture excellent young talent.
For instance, the opening of the information network in attracting people’s
attention may enable us to get a lift on the development express, but also
subject us to the surprise attack of cultural garbage and even run a certain
risk. No opening-up can be protected from negatives for a short period, but in
the long-term to block the path towards world expressways causes the greatest
insecurity.
Secondly, the goal of Chinese cultural building can
be achieved only by a cultural opening. The socialist culture representing the
progressive course of China’s advanced culture and with Chinese
characteristics certainly will be geared to modernization, the world and the
future; certainly it will be open. China’s cultural modernization has been
accelerated under the attack of external cultures and through opening will be
pushed forward in handling relations with external cultures. The concepts and
ideas such as rule of law, science, democracy and innovation all are introduced
from the West, extremely enriching China’s thinking and culture and promoting
the establishment of the socialist culture. Moving from a society with a
relatively comfortable life to the level of a moderately developed country, it
becomes more urgent for China to absorb all of human civilization. In the long
ideological progress of the achievements, feudalistic remnants still exert their
effects and ignorance and backwardness still opposes science and civilization,
so cultural modernization shoulders a heavy responsibility.
Western capitalist countries have taken the lead in
modernization and have used some practices of opposition socialist countries in
promoting their own development. On the contrary, learning and drawing lessons
from capitalist countries by socialist countries is far inferior. In learning
and drawing lessons from the latter, we must sort out the achievements of human
civilizations from the capitalist system and understand fully what they are and
how to fuse and absorb them. Though Chinese modernization will not take the road
of capitalism, this does not mean rejection of the cream of Western culture. If
we are unable to sort out in Western culture what is of the essence and what is
dross, we shall make the wrong choice in the process of opening and delay
China’s modernization. Of course, our cultural opening is omnidirectional. We
shall incorporate cultures of diverse nature and adopt the strong points from
all cultures, whether Western developed countries or Asian, African and Latin
American developing countries or transitional countries.
Thirdly, China should make more contributions,
including cultural ones, to humankind; only by implementing an opening policy
can this objective be reached. The Chinese nation has a long history; its
culture goes back to ancient times and has been splendid. It made tremendous
contributions to the history of human civilization, but its backwardness in
modern times made it look like a bright pearl covered with dust. We have
implemented an opening policy and learned and absorbed the cream of external
cultures with the aim of distinguishing the differences and developing through
interaction. We have modernized the transformation of Chinese culture to enable
it to reach the level of the times. For example, in the feudal society
“loyalty” meant “to be loyal to the sovereign and devoted to the
country”. We should inherit the tradition of patriotism and remove the feudal
flavor. “Filial piety” was the basis of the feudal social ethics. We must
assimilate it with discrimination, transforming it into the principle of
relations between generations in the family. Only on the basis of a modernized
transformation can we spread it to the rest of the world. The new scientific and
technological revolution and economic globalization have promoted various
unprecedented cultural exchanges and provided a golden opportunity and a
marvelously fast means for spreading Chinese culture. China needs to enhance its
awareness in this regard and explore a huge space. To spread the excellent
Chinese culture to the outside world, the way, method, means and mechanism
should be brand-new, convincing, compelling and penetrating. This requires an
opening policy, in-depth understanding of the state of cultures in different
countries of the world and of the people’s psychology of acceptance and
popularization. Cultural dissemination, of course, cannot do without the
material support, but it is mechanical and one-sided simply to equate cultural
ability with economic or military strength. Wisdom can resolve difficult
problems.
Lastly, only by implementing the opening policy can
the reactionary propaganda of hostile domestic and foreign forces and various
decadent, superstitious and pornographic ideologies and views be resisted and
criticized.
That Marxism is the guiding ideology of our socialism
is unshakable. The truth of Marxism has been established and developed through
its struggles against various falsehoods. Today, the Chinese people accept rich,
numerous and jumbled information rapidly and have active minds. Great changes
have taken place in their cultural level, psychological state, cognitive ability
and appreciation, so it will not work to educate them by means of closed doors.
Only by implementing the opening policy to allow people to make comparisons in
practices, can socialism become their conscious choice and can their beliefs be
unshakable.
After the ten-year great calamity, some Chinese lost
their self-confidence when the country was opened to the outside world and
stayed abroad by every possible means. But after a 20-year opening, China’s
comprehensive national strength has been enhanced, the Divine Land has taken on
a new look, the people’s standard of living has been raised, the confidence in
socialist modernization has been strengthened and students studying abroad have
begun to return. All these are good contrasts. The development of information
technology, especially the internet technology, has provided new means of
opening. There is much progressive, healthy and beneficial information, but
there is not a little reactionary, superstitious and pornographic content.
Domestic and foreign hostile forces want to make use of them to attract the
masses and confuse people’s hearts. This should arouse our vigilance, but we
can rely only on opening in two ways in this struggle. One is to strengthen
Marxist and socialist education in enabling the masses to have their own
judgment. The other is to take the initiative to launch attacks and make use of
the Internet to defeat the false, the bad and the ugly with the true, the good
and the beautiful. In sum, only by a cultural opening to intensify cultural
construction can the success of economic, political and social opening-up be
guaranteed and can a foundation be laid for China’s national rejuvenation.
NOTES
1. See the author’s article entitled “The
Destiny of Culture -- Pondering over Relations between External Culture and
Native Culture in Modernization Process”, Cross-century
Development Strategy and Cultural and Ethical Progress (Shanghai: Shanghai
Academy of Social Sciences Publishing House, 1997 edition), p. 669.
2. Roland Robertson, “Globalization: Social Theory
and Global Culture” (London: Sage, 1992), p. 102.