The International Conference to Commemorate the 2575th Anniversary of Confucius’ Birth, which is also the 7th Congress of the International Confucian Association (ICA), was held in Beijing from October 19 to 21.
The Conference kicked off at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on the morning of October 19. Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, addressed the opening ceremony. The opening ceremony has had the largest attendance so far, with over 730 guests from roughly 110 countries and regions. Nearly 300 were international guests. The opening ceremony was presided over by ICA President Sun Chunlan. Former Japanese Prime Minister and Council Chair of the ICA Fukuda Yasuo, former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema, and former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, either in person or through other means, delivered speeches.
On the 7th Congress of the International Confucian Association held on the afternoon of October 19, a new leadership was elected: Sun Chunlan as ICA (seventh) President; Fukuda Yasuo as Council Chair; and Hao Ping, Secretary of the CPC Peking University Committee and Chairman of Peking University Council, as Executive Vice-President of ICA. YCA Dean Dong Qiang was elected Vice President (seventh) of ICA.
On the morning of October 21, the Seventh Executive Committee of ICA convened its first meeting. ICA President Sun Chunlan presided over the meeting and delivered a speech. Forty-nine committee members from nearly 30 countries and regions, including China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Russia, Germany, Seychelles, Iceland, and Brazil, attended the meeting. Eighteen members spoke on the meeting, such as Miyamoto Yūji, Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer, HongSik Park, Vincent Meriton, Phinij Jarusombat, Ong Tee Keat, Hao Ping, Meng Man, Kang Zhen, and Dong Qiang, on the issues like the expounding and spreading of Confucianism, conservation and development of fine traditional cultures, and exchange of mutual learning between civilizations.
Dean Dong Qiang and the German sinologist Prof Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer
Dean Dong attended the cultural events in commemoration of the 2575th Anniversary of Confucius’ Birth. On September 26, a calligraphy exhibition commemorating the 30th anniversary of the International Confucian Association kicked off in Beijing Confucian Temple and the Imperial College. Prof Dong’s calligraphy Eight Poems by Zhu Xi is on display and collected in A Calligraphy Collection—Confucianism: Cultureal Diversity and Modernization. The calligraphy exhibition was on at Beijing International Hotel. It will go to Shaoxing and Guiyang later.
On the evening of October 20, the modern dance drama Journey to the West was put on the stage of the Capital Library Theater. The French composer Laurent Petitgirard, Chinese dancer-choreographer Wang Yabin, and YCA Dean Dong Qiang work in collaboration for the dance drama as composer, choreographer, and director/translator/advisor. The dance drama was a huge success at Marigny Theater, Paris, on May 21 and warmly applauded by the over 800 audience, including cultural and academic dignitaries and overseas Chinese in France.
Vincent Meriton, former Vice President of Seychelles, Dong Qiang, dance drama Journey to the West artists and others after the performance
Prof Dong has engaged with comparative study of Chinese and French cultures and been a “ferryman” between the two cultures. His French translation of The Analects and the book Tang Shi Zhi Lu (The Road of Tang Poetry) co-authored with the Nobel Prize-winning French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio are best-sellers in France. In September 2021, the then ICA President Liu Yandong invited Prof Dong to be a special advisor of ICA. At the ICA’s invitation, Prof Dong presided over the online donation ceremony for the photocopy of the Wenlan-edition Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (Siku Quanshu), at the Wenlan Belvedere in Hangzhou on September 22, 2021. May 21 and 22, 2024, Prof Dong hosted the subforum of the ICA 2024 Forum of Civilizations: Harmony and Unity held at Musée Guimet, Paris. The guests to the Olympics-themed subforum included Jean-François Lamour, a French Olympic fencing champion and former Minister of Sports of France; Éric Monnin, Ambassador of Paris 2024; and Ding Ning, Chinese Olympic table tennis champion.
On the subforum of the ICA 2024 Forum of Civilizations: Harmony and Unity
