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北京大学英语新闻网/Peking University News
Prof. Lin Yifu Gave Speech on
Economic Development and Chinese
Culture Revival at Champion Forum
PKU NEWS 2008--05—25
http://ennews.pku.edu.cn/news.php?s=211772672
Peking University, May 25, 2008: On May 21, Prof. Justin Yifu Lin, Director of CCER
was invited by the Champion Forum to give a speech on ―Economic Development
and the Revival of Chinese Culture‖ at the PKU Centennial Commemorative Hall.
Next month, Prof. Lin will go to Washington to take up the post of vice president and
chief economist of the World Bank. The speech before his leaving attracted many
students to the Multifunction Hall.
Prof. Lin said that the Chinese culture was once one of the leading cultures in the
world, but it has fallen behind the western countries since the last two century. It is
every Chinese intellectual‘s wish to find out the reason for that phenomenon and to
revive the Chinese culture. Prof. Lin then gave his explanation for that from an
economic angle. He said that in ancient China where manual laborers and farmers
made up most of the population, technological innovations which were based on the
workers‘ first-hand experiences emerged one after another. The four great inventions
led the Chinese culture to the highest level of the world. But the thousand-year
development of culture also led to the declining after its heyday. Prof. Lin referred to
the comparison research of Chinese and Western histories to point out that the
cultural development plays an important role in a country‘s historical process, but it
also brings forward the problem of the role the traditional culture plays in the modern
time.
According to Prof. Lin, to discuss culture revival, first the definition of culture must be
made clear. Culture not only is the material and spiritual fortune human beings
created during the social progress, but also has deeper levels of content—tools,
organization, and systems of values and moralities. The clash of two civilizations is
the conflict between two incompatible cultures, and the comparison of two cultures
often stays on the level of tools, i.e. the comparison of economic powers.
The rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is actually the revival of Chinese culture.
Prof. Lin gave answers to such questions as whether or not the Confucianism can be
fit into the complex contemporary social ideology, are there conflicts between
political and economic developments, and can the core value system of
Confucianism be sustained in market economic system.
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