China has already joined the WTO, and the issue of cultural security should arouse people's attention. With increasing intercultural exchanges, conflicts and contradictions will become more outstanding and China's cultural security will inevitably be influenced and challenged in certain degree.

1. Influence and challenge from cultural colonialism. In recent years, some western developed countries employed cultural methods to restrict and influence world affairs and developing countries' internal affairs. Resorting to their special position in the WTO, they impose their own cultural thoughts and value judgment upon other member countries and rudely interfere with other countries' internal affairs in the excuse of human rights. "Aggression" in this form is just the typical manifestation of "the cultural colonialism". As a WTO member, China is more exposed to direct attacks of cultural colonialism and it should take effective measures against this.

2. Influence and challenge from cultural products. Cultural products are special consumer goods and their functions are to satisfy people's spiritual life, and then cultivate and enhance their cultural tutelage. After China joins the WTO, influence and challenge in this aspect are piped to the country through various channels - direct participation of foreign companies and foreign capital in production and distribution of Chinese cultural products, and inflow of more foreign cultural products, making the work of guarding the realm of public opinions and resisting foreign cultural penetration more complicated and challenging.

3. Influence and challenge from information network. Internet leads the new trend of today's world and is also the most powerful modern way of spreading cultural conception. After the WTO entry, China permits foreign capital to enter the Internet sector, providing a wider access to a mass of unhealthy cultural consumer goods and even harmful propagandas for Chinese users.

Cultural clashes and conflicts in the international relation raise a new issue: how to develop excellent cultures and to maintain cultural security.

Maintaining cultural security is an important component of guaranteeing the national security of a country. After the Cold War, traditional factors of national security such as politics and military gave the dominant positions to culture, science and technology, and economy. The latter factors have become an important tool of measuring a country's overall national strength. Therefore, maintaining cultural security is actually maintaining the national security.

Culture is the soul of a nation. Good cultural security is good to the national unification, and agglomeration of its people and will provide spiritual impetus and intellectual support to a country's economic development and social advancement.

To ensure good cultural security and to promote excellent cultures, we should do a good job in the following aspects:

1. Properly dealing with the relation between national culture and foreign cultures. To maintain cultural security does not mean to resist all foreign cultures. We should actually assimilate their essence and make them serve China's own cultural development.

2. Properly dealing with the relation between social benefit and economic benefit of cultural products and services and integrate the two together. The socialist culture industry is an undertaking in the public interest and it should always give the top priority to social benefit. Better economic benefit is to better realize the social benefit. In developing China's culture industry, we should integrate the two together and make economic benefit subject to and serve social benefit when they are in conflict with each other.

3. Properly dealing with the relation between information technology (IT), its application, and IT products' development and management. At present, IT together with its product development and application has become the core of international competition. China should actively participate the competition, promote its IT industry and increase its strength in guarding its cultural security.

Besides, China should step up legal system governing the culture industry, pursue law-abiding administration and bring its cultural management in line with the international practice.

(Source: China Culture Newspaper)