Beijing Review: Civilizations in Conversation
BEIJING, June 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- On June 7, 2024, the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a China-proposed resolution to designate June 10 as the International Day for Dialogue Among Civilizations. The event's first edition was celebrated worldwide on June 10 this year.
The establishment of the day could not have been more timely, as it seeks to draw global attention to the importance of dialogue and promote greater exchange and harmony among civilizations.
"Things are born to be different." This line from The Mencius, a collection of sayings of Confucian philosopher Mencius, who lived some 2,300 years ago, captures a fundamental truth rooted in the laws of nature: Everything in the world is inherently different.
On March 28, 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping quoted this line in his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference, an annual forum held in Boao, a resort town in China's southern island province of Hainan. The quote stresses that all civilizations are unique and no one is superior to the other.
Xi called on the international community to foster dialogue and exchange among civilizations and different development models, to learn from each other through healthy competition and to achieve shared development through mutual understanding. Inter-civilizational exchange should serve as a bridge that connects nations, an engine that drives human progress and a bond that sustains world peace, he added.
Once again, the global community has arrived at a critical juncture, where regional conflicts continue to break out, where humanity faces mounting challenge to global peace, security, development and governance.
Against this backdrop, a way for civilizations to coexist in harmony has become a pressing challenge--one that the international community can no longer afford to ignore.
In response to this challenge, Xi first proposed the Global Civilizations Initiative at the Communist Party of China (CPC) in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting held in Beijing in March 2023.
The initiative calls for a shared commitment to respecting the world's diverse civilizations. This means upholding the principles of equality, mutual learning, dialogue and inclusiveness, bridging divides through exchange, resolving tensions through mutual understanding and moving beyond claims of cultural superiority toward peaceful coexistence.
It is in this spirit that China has positioned itself as both a staunch advocate of and an active participant in inter-civilizational exchange.
The country has built multiple platforms dedicated to promoting dialogue and cultural exchange. Through these efforts, the Chinese philosophy that every civilization has its own beauty and all can flourish together has found growing resonance around the world.
Meanwhile, the world remains shadowed by lingering notions of "civilizational superiority" and the "clash of civilizations," a concept first introduced in 1992 by U.S. political scientist Samuel Huntington, who argued that people's cultural and religious identities would become the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War era. These recurring echoes of obsolete thinking are a reminder that old prejudices die hard.
We should all keep in mind that every nation has its own history, culture and social system, and that this diversity is a defining feature of civilizations. It is not our differences but our pride and prejudice that divide us.
By finding common ground amid differences and seeking solidarity through mutual respect as well as open dialogue, our diverse civilizations will not only shine all the more brightly but also come together to light the way toward a better future for all of humanity.
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