China Respects the Diversity of Civilizations – Danzhu LOU

According to Danzhu LOU, the Director of Political Affairs at the Chinese Embassy in Ghana, China has always prioritized respecting all civilizations under the paradigm of “diversity in harmony”. This, according to her, has been the thinking of China for thousands of years.

“For thousands of years, China has developed a mindset of respecting the diversity of civilizations and formed a paradigm of “diversity in harmony”.

“For example, Confucianism stressed harmonious coexistence between people, and between people and their surroundings.”

The Africa-China Centre for Policy & Advisory, a Sino-African research and policy think tank and advisory firm, in collaboration with the Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana, held the Public Forum on China’s newly proposed Global Civilization Initiative during which she made these remarks.

The forum’s central theme was China’s new proposal called the Global Civilization Initiative, which outlines key pillars on how we can build a harmonious and peaceful world without antagonism and confrontations, as we have seen in recent times.

The forum attracted some 200 participants and key policy experts from both the public and private sectors and the diplomatic community, who discussed and shared perspectives on China’s Global Civilization Initiative and how that could be leveraged to build peace, stability, and prosperity in our world today.

According to Danzhu, “In today’s world, as the future of all countries is closely connected, tolerance, coexistence, exchanges, and mutual learning among different civilizations play an irreplaceable role in advancing humanity’s modernization process”.

“Whether countries will go to confrontation or shared prosperity, and whether history will go backward or forward, depend to a large extent on how we view and deal with the differences among different civilizations.”

She, therefore, called on all countries, irrespective of size and status, to respect the diversity of civilization, which in itself is a panacea for mutual learning.

The relevance of the key tenets put forth in the Global Civilization Initiative, which China’s President Xi Jinping announced in March 2023, was a topic of discussion among other speakers during the forum.

According to Paul Frimpong, the Executive Director of the ACCPA, they will continue to build on the momentum of this public forum to drive forward-looking conversations between Africa and China.