Museums help build bridges for civilizations

A decade after President Xi Jinping and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi toured Luxor, a city widely known as one of the world's largest open-air museums, the two leaders again stepped into the world of ancient Egypt — this time at the Grand Egyptian Museum on the Giza Plateau.

On Wednesday, during Xi's state visit to Egypt, the two presidents and their wives visited the museum, viewing treasures including the throne, golden mask and royal chariots of Tutankhamun. Surrounded by artifacts tracing thousands of years of Egyptian civilization, Xi called the museum "a book with endless pages".

During the tour, Xi noted that China and Egypt are both ancient civilizations and countries rich in World Heritage sites. He called on the two sides to uphold a vision of civilization based on equality, mutual learning, dialogue and inclusiveness, implement the Global Civilization Initiative, and promote inclusive coexistence and mutual learning among different civilizations.

Museums have been repeatedly featured in Xi's engagement with history and civilization — as places for understanding cultural roots and as settings for encounters with other civilizations.

In a congratulatory letter to the first UNESCO High-Level Forum on Museums in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, in November 2016, Xi described museums as important places for protecting and passing on human civilizations and as bridges linking the past, present and future, with a special role in exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations.

Whether on domestic inspection tours or overseas trips, Xi's visits have taken him to many museums, such as the Sanxingdui Museum in Southwest China's Sichuan province and the Yinxu Museum in Central China's Henan province, key sites of early Chinese civilization.

During a visit in April 2021 to the Anthropology Museum of Guangxi in Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Xi said that he made time to visit museums during local inspection tours to better understand a place's historical and cultural development.

At a symposium at the Dunhuang Academy in Gansu province in August 2019, Xi spoke about cultural confidence and learning from other civilizations.

"Only a self-confident civilization can absorb and draw on the achievements of other civilizations while maintaining its own characteristics," he said. Xi also called for broader cultural exchanges with other countries and more active efforts to learn from the achievements of civilizations around the world.

Dong Biao, a researcher at Peking University's Institute of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, said museums preserve both the tangible achievements and the cultural and intellectual legacy of human civilizations, enabling people to engage more directly with the creativity, ways of life and ideas of past societies.

A deeper understanding of one's own history and culture can strengthen cultural identity and confidence, Dong said. Rather than being exclusionary, such confidence can provide a basis for civilizations to meet on an equal footing, respect each other's values and learn from one another.

For Xi, museums offer people a chance to discover unfamiliar histories, recognize common threads of human creativity and gain a deeper understanding of one another.

"In the many places I have visited around the world, what fascinates me the most is civilizations in their rich diversity," Xi said at the opening of the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations in May 2019.

His overseas visits over the years have included stops at museums and historic sites such as the Amir Timur Museum in Uzbekistan and the ancient Maya ruins of Chichen Itza in Mexico.

At the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, in November 2019, one such cultural encounter unfolded around a single artifact.

Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, were visiting the museum with then Greek president Prokopis Pavlopoulos and his wife when they stopped before the relief known as the "Pensive Athena".

Pavlopoulos explained that Athena, the goddess of warfare and wisdom in Greek mythology, was resting and contemplating after battle. Xi said she was reflecting on what war meant and cited the ancient Chinese idiom "zhi ge wei wu", which means that to be able to stop war is the true art of war.

Xi later said the museum visit had deepened his understanding of ancient Greek civilization and made him further realize how much the Chinese and Greek civilizations have in common.

Museums have also served as settings in which Xi introduced China's history and cultural ideas to visiting foreign leaders.

During Donald Trump's first state visit to China in November 2017, Xi and Peng accompanied the US president and first lady Melania Trump through the Palace Museum, or Forbidden City.

As they walked along its central axis, Xi introduced the history, architecture and culture of the ancient palace. They visited the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Central Harmony and the Hall of Preserving Harmony, whose names reflect the Chinese cultural ideal of harmony.

Xi told Trump that China's history can be traced back more than 5,000 years, or even earlier, and its culture has been passed down in an unbroken continuum.

Wang Yiwei, vice-president of the Academy of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era at Renmin University of China, said that exchanges among civilizations are not only about preserving the past, but also about how societies understand one another in the present.

He said the Global Civilization Initiative put forward by President Xi reflects this emphasis by calling for respect for the diversity of civilizations and for equality, mutual learning, dialogue and inclusiveness. Different civilizations should be able to retain their own identities and development choices rather than be judged against a single model, he added.

At a time of geopolitical rivalry, conflicts and differences over values, Wang said that dialogue among civilizations cannot replace political negotiations or resolve disagreements over national interests. But it can help countries better understand one another's histories, identities and development paths, reduce misperceptions and strengthen the basis for mutual understanding.