The index of China's cultural influence ranks 7th in the world, behind the US, Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Spain, according to the "China Modernization Report 2009 — A Study on Cultural Modernization", released by the China Center for Modernization Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on January 17 in Beijing. The index is based on various indicators and data on countries from 2005.
He Chuanqi, Chief of the strategic research project team on China's modernization and Director of CAS' China Center for Modernization Research, said major indicators used to gauge a nation's degree of cultural modernization are the nation's index of cultural life modernization, index of cultural competitive power and index of cultural influence.
Based on statistics compiled in 2005, the international rankings of China's cultural modernization are generally as follows: of 131 nations, China's index of cultural life modernization ranks 58th, on par with other preliminarily developed countries; its index of cultural competitiveness ranks 24th, on the level of medium power countries in the world; and its index of cultural influence ranks 7th, placing it among the world class powers.
In other words the index of China's cultural influence performed better than its index of cultural competitive power, and its index of cultural life modernization had the largest gap behind other countries. Therefore, the key to China's cultural modernization is to raise the level of modernization in cultural life.
According to Hu Chuanqi, every country has its one unique culture and every developed country has to some degree absorbed foreign culture. He added that China’s culture modernization lags about 100 years behind that of the world modernization. The process of China’s culture modernization involves interaction between traditional and modern culture, domestic and foreign cultures. It consists of three stages: beginning (1840/60-1911), partial development (1912-1949), and overall development (1949-present).
“China boasts a 5,000-year civilization. Chinese culture ranks among the most excellent cultures in the world as it goes all the way down till today despite rises and falls; while Chinese culture has flaws as the country failed to initiate modern science and technology and keep up with scientific development in the 16th and 17th centuries,” Zhang Dainian, a well-known Chinese philosopher, wrote.
“China today should both inherit excellent elements of traditional culture and borrow advanced ideas from other cultures. China has to choose a development strategy that will help Chinese people have access to world-class cultural lifestyles,” He Chuanqi said.
The report expounds the strategic goals of China's cultural modernization in the 21st century and points out they can be divided into two stages. The first stage goal is that, by 2050, cultural life modernization should achieve the level of moderately developed countries; the first cultural modernization should be completed in an all-round way and the second cultural modernization should begin. The second stage goal is that by 2100, cultural life modernization should be promoted to the rank of developed countries and the second cultural modernization should be completed in an all-round way.
Editor: Dong Jirong
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