The Excellent Traditional Chinese Culture

The essence of the inherent cultural accumulation of the Chinese nation is the concentrated expression and classic refinement of the Chinese people’s way of thinking, value orientation, belief pursuit, ethics, lifestyle, and aesthetic appeal for thousands of years, and is the cultural root and cultural gene inherited by the Chinese nation. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as its core has attached great importance to the inheritance and development of Chinese excellent traditional culture, and emphasized that in practice, we must conscientiously absorb the ideological and moral essence of Chinese traditional culture, vigorously promote the thought and spirit of unity and solidarity, love for peace, diligence and courageousness, and unremittingly pursuing self-renewal with patriotism as the core, deeply explore and interpret the value of the times of Chinese traditional culture of “stressing benevolence, emphasizing the people, keeping honesty, upholding justice, advocating harmony, and seeking great unity”, and promote creative transformation and innovative development of Chinese traditional virtues, making Chinese excellent traditional culture an important source of conserving Socialist core value. The formation and development of Chinese traditional culture, especially its core ideological culture, has generally experienced several historical periods such as the contending of a hundred schools of thought among the pre-Qin philosophers, the prosperity of the Han Confucianism, the popularity of metaphysics in the Wei and Jin, the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the parallelism of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and the development of Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming Dynasties. Confucianism has long achieved a dominant position in the field of Chinese ideology and culture, but Chinese ideology and culture are still developing in multiple directions. These ideological cultures embody the world outlook, outlook on life, values, aesthetics, etc., that the Chinese nation has formed and passed on from generation to generation in production and life. The core content has become the most basic cultural gene of the Chinese nation.

These most basic cultural genes are the unique identifiers that the Chinese nation and the Chinese people have gradually formed in the process of cultivating morality, regulating families, governing the country and bringing peace to the world, following the rules of the day to maintain status and position, adhering to principles while adapting to changes, knowing the truth of everything, and being able to do all kinds of things well, and establishing merits and accomplishing great cause. In August 2013, Xi Jinping put forward the “Four Clear Statements” at the National Propaganda Work Conference, stating that “Chinese culture accumulates the deepest spiritual pursuits of the Chinese nation, and it is the rich nourishment for the Chinese nation to continue to grow and develop”, which indicates that Chinese history and Chinese roads have their distinctive characteristics. In April 2014, the Ministry of Education issued the “Guiding Outline for Improving Chinese Excellent Traditional Culture Education”, which comprehensively discussed and analyzed the importance and urgency of strengthening Chinese excellent traditional cultural education. On May 4, 2014, General Secretary Xi Jinping’s speech at the teacher-student symposium of Peking University explained the inner connection between the Socialist core value and the excellent Chinese traditional culture. He pointed out that the Socialist core value we advocate must “absorb rich nutrition from the excellent Chinese traditional culture, otherwise there will be no vitality and influence”. On September 24, 2014, General Secretary Xi Jinping put forward in his speech at the International Academic Symposium to Commemorate the 2,565th Anniversary of Confucius’s Birth and the 5th Conference of the International Confucian Association, “We must be good at organically uniting the promotion of excellent traditional culture and the development of real culture, closely combining them, and developing in inheritance and inheriting in development”. He emphasized that in the process of studying and promoting the excellent Chinese traditional culture, “We must adhere to making the past serve the present and learning from the past, adhere to differentiated treatment and inheritance with sublation, never esteem the past over the present nor attack the present with the past, strive to realize the creative transformation and innovative development of traditional culture, make it integrated with real culture, and jointly serve the tasks of the times of educating people with culture”. In January 2017, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the “Opinions on the Implementation of the Inheritance and Development Project of Chinese Excellent Traditional Culture”, stating that: “The unique concept, wisdom, tolerance and charm of Chinese culture have increased the confidence and pride of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation”.

The excellent traditional Chinese culture has the spirit of civilization creation, the dialectical spirit of exploring the essence and origin of things, the harmonious spirit of harmony between man and nature, the moral spirit of personality formation, the communication spirit of drawing upon the strengths of others, the patriotic spirit of “regarding the national affairs as their own duty”, and the innovative spirit of advancing with the times, etc. The excellent traditional Chinese culture accumulates the deepest spiritual pursuits of the Chinese nation, contains the most fundamental spiritual genes of the Chinese nation, represents the unique spiritual identity of the Chinese nation, and is rich nourishment for the Chinese nation’s continuous growth and prosperity, and an important support for the common spiritual homeland of the Chinese nation; and also our outstanding advantage and most profound cultural soft power, as well as deep foundation for our firm confidence in the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics.