When Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted informal talks with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, on April 7, one thing stood out to observant eyes.  

In a short video clip published online by China Global Television Network, the international division of state media outlet China Central Television, the two presidents watched and listened as a musician played the 1,000-year-old tune High Mountain Flowing Water on a guqin, a plucked seven-string traditional Chinese musical instrument. 

Xi then introduced to Macron the origins of the musical composition, which are found in a beautiful tale set around 475 B.C. about the friendship between guqin master Yu Boya and his dear friend Zhong Ziqi--who loved listening to his melodies. After Zhong died, Bo allegedly broke his guqin because he thought that no one else would ever understand his music like his friend. 

Their story of friendship generated the term Zhiyin, which literally translates as “someone who knows music well,” but which from then on referred to close friends who can completely understand one another. 

“I need to write this down,” the French president replied. 

“Macron is obviously quite interested in traditional Chinese instruments,” Zhao Xiaohua, a renowned soprano vocalist in China and Vice President of the Sino-French Cultural and Artistic Exchange Association, told an international forum on youth exchange in Beijing on April 12. 

“In fact, the French really admire Chinese culture. Many people in France study Confucius and traditional Chinese medicine. Chinese acupuncture and moxibustion can be legally practiced in France,” Zhao said. 

According to Zhao, the guqin performance offered people both a taste of the musical aesthetics of ancient China as well as an insight into the world’s current need for people--especially the youth--from different cultural backgrounds and countries must come together and communicate in person. 

Following three long years of COVID-19, opportunities for in-person communication are luckily rife once again, with the Beijing International Youth Forum (BIYF) presenting a millennial, Gen-Z style option. Themed Youth for a Better Future, the forum’s second edition took place in China’s capital on April 12, with more than 200 young, defined as people within the age range of 20-35, Chinese and foreign experts plus scholars discussing topics around and beyond youth. 

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China is an active participant in economic globalization and an engine of global economic growth, providing broad development opportunities for young people around the world. “Many of this event’s participants have already realized their dreams of innovation and entrepreneurship in China,” Gao Anming, Vice President and Editor in Chief of China International Communications Group, said in his speech at the forum. 

As part of the most dynamic and creative population group, young minds are better able to grasp the new opportunities and make the most of the new resources globalization entails when, for example, starting up their own business, according to Gao. 

BIYF participant Michael Ovtchinnikov is a good example here. This Swiss entrepreneur who founded a consulting company in Beijing told Beijing Review that people must exchange resources to be able to tap into their full potential. “This is, for example, what the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to do. First proposed by China in 2013, the initiative is really creating a trade, investment and infrastructure network that connects different regions along and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes,” he said. 

Spanning thousands of miles, the ancient trade routes have long embodied the spirit of cooperation, mutual learning and mutual benefit. This year marks the BRI’s 10th anniversary and so far the initiative has brought tangible benefits to the people of participating countries as well as promoted people-to-people exchanges. 

“The BRI now has 10 years of experience and it will develop even better in the next 10 years,” Pan Qingzhong, Executive Dean of the Schwarzman Scholars Program at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, told Beijing Review. Pan has visited at least one third of the Belt and Road countries. In March, he traveled to Azerbaijan where he found “all kinds of investment are welcome because both of us (China and Azerbaijan) have a lot of resources.” According to Ambassador of Azerbaijan to China Akram Zeynalli, trade volume between Azerbaijan and China has doubled in the past decade. 

China is not just proposing initiatives and suggestions for global development and security, but also contributing to them through actions and actually achieving concrete results, another BIYF participant said. “The country’s successful mediation that led to the resumption of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran [in early March] and the BRI that links countries with different civilizations to jointly realize development are two examples thereof,” Pouya Amani, a new media curator from Iran who’s currently studying art and design at Tsinghua University, told Beijing Review. 

From his Gen-Z perspective, Amani sees China as actively utilizing its experiences to address global challenges, leading more and more countries to carefully analyze and consider implementing China’s initiatives. “The Global Civilizations Initiative (GCI), in particular,” he added. 

A “diverse” emphasis 

Launched by President Xi during his keynote address at the Communist Party of China in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting on March 15, the GCI is another major public product China offers to the world--following the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative, both put forward by Xi in 2021 and 2022, respectively. 

For Joseph Olivier Mendo’o from Cameroon, head of the Delegation of African Youth in China, the GCI, once again, illustrates China’s openness and willingness to embrace other cultures. “This basically means its mind can be broadened to learn from other cultures and accept the existing differences,” he said. “People need to keep an open mind in appreciating how different civilizations perceive ‘values’.” 

Other forum participants echoed Mendo’o’s viewpoint, with many expressing how they intend to use what they have seen, heard and learned during their time in the country to tell the world about the real China. 

Nik Gu, a Russian student at Tsinghua University and a member of the Youth Platform of Shanghai Cooperation Organization Countries, is one such “narrator.” Having lived in China for more than 10 years, Gu has now become, what he called, “an old China hand” after delving into the profoundness of Chinese culture--peeling back the layers one at a time. “China has become my second hometown,” Gu said at the BIYF. 

In today’s increasingly complex international environment, Pan recommended the youth look to the ancient Chinese Daoist philosopher Laozi (ca. 600-501 B.C.), who allegedly once remarked: “The greatest virtue is just like water, nurturing all things without competing with them.” A thought that in the midst of rampant geopolitical turmoil surely still applies today. 

Printed edition title: Young Minds Matter  

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon  

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