Cultivate cultural identity

Whenever the United States is mentioned, Hollywood movies and Coca Cola come to mind; with Japan, it's sumo and sushi that are synonymous with the island nation's culture; France is always associated with wine and perfume; while for Brazil, samba and free-flowing football are common associations.

What is the cultural identity of our nation? Kungfu? Peking Opera? Or dumplings?

Asked such a question, we can easily end up scratching our heads, as we find it quite difficult to come up with a clear answer.

Perhaps the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which is the highest grossing non-English film in the US, or Yao Ming, the Chinese star of the US National Basketball Association's Houston Rockets, who is a household name in the US.

A blue book entitled the Annual Report on China's Cultural Soft Power Research, published by Social Sciences Academic Press of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences last week, found that China's cultural industry contributed less than 4 percent to the world's output, dwarfed by the size of its economy and population.

Also, the share of this industry in the nation's GDP was much lower than the proportion in Western countries, which was more than 10 percent.

While we have spent many years creating booming primary and secondary industries, we have spent little time focusing on becoming a cultural world entity.

And economic powerhouse aside, cultural productions are valuable tools for building a strong nation.

As Joseph Nye of Harvard University, who invented the term "soft power" some 20 years ago, emphasized: "In today's information age, success depends not only on whose army wins, but also on whose story wins."

The nation has always had a strong traditional culture and we have created more than 300 Confucius Institutes and another 300 Confucius Classrooms in 96 countries to teach our language and culture. More than 40 million people are learning Chinese around the world.

However, ask these people what the modern Chinese identity is and they are likely to reply in economic terms.

The country has been running at full throttle pursuing economic growth for three decades, now it is time to feed the soul and build our sense of identity.

It is important that the government put the nation's cultural well-being at the top of its agenda.

(China Daily 02/23/2011 page8)