On June 12, the 2026 Hehe Civilization Forum, co-hosted by the International Confucian Association (ICA) and Tashkent State University of Oriental Studies (TSUOS), was held in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, under the theme of “The Wisdom of Harmony and Cooperation and High-Quality Development of the Belt and Road Initiative.” ICA President Sun Chunlan delivered a video address at the opening ceremony. Among the dignitaries delivering speeches were Rakhim Khakimov, deputy speaker of the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis of Uzbekistan; Yu Jun, Chinese ambassador to Uzbekistan; Djoomart Otorbaev, former prime minister of Kyrgyzstan; and Daminov Asqarali, vice minister of higher education, science and innovation of Uzbekistan. Others included Ma Huaide, president of Renmin University of China; Gulchekhra Rikhsieva, rector of TSUOS; and Hao Ping, executive vice president of the ICA.
Keynote speakers at the opening ceremony included Xing Guangcheng, member of the Academic Council of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and a first-class researcher of the CASS Institute of Chinese Frontier Studies; Tursunali Kuziev, former minister of culture and sports of Uzbekistan and professor at the University of Journalism and Mass Communications of Uzbekistan; Zhang Guogang, professor in the Department of History, School of Humanities, Tsinghua University; Saodat Nasirova, Uzbek Director of the Confucius Institute at TSUOS; Klara Shaysultanovna Khafizova, the famous Kazakhstani scholar of Chinese studies, historian, specialist in diplomacy and international relations, and advisory of the ICA; and Ning Qi, vice president of Peking University.
This year’s forum featured four sub-forums: The Scholars’ Forum on the “Historical Foundation and Global Significance of the China-Central Asia Spirit,” the University Presidents’ Roundtable on “New Pathways for Developing Global Talents in the Era of Digital Intelligence,” the Youth Forum on “People-to-People Exchange and the Mission of the Younger Generation,” and the Entrepreneurs’ Forum on the “Contemporary Heritage of the Silk Road Commercial Civilization.”
Dong Qiang, dean of Yenching Academy and vice president of the ICA hosted the keynote forum at the opening ceremony and delivered a speech titled “Center and Periphery: The ‘Roots’ and ‘Wings’ of Ancient Civilizations in Today’s World” at the Scholars’ Forum. The following is the full text.
Center and Periphery: The ‘Roots’ and ‘Wings’ of Ancient Civilizations in Today’s World
Distinguished guests, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, good afternoon!
It is my great honor and pleasure to speak at the ICA Hehe Forum in Tashkent. And it is my honor to have chaired the keynote session this morning. I am grateful to the organizers for their arrangements, which have enabled me to speak at the Scholars’ Forum on the “Historical Foundation and Global Significance of the China-Central Asia Spirit” and have discussions with experts and scholars from China and the five Central Asian countries.
My speech today is titled “Center and Periphery: The ‘Roots’ and ‘Wings’ of Ancient Civilizations in Today’s World.” Given the limited time, my speech today will be drawn from my personal experience and reflections. I would simply like to share with you my observations, without further elaboration. I was admitted to Peking University in 1983 and began to learn French, which was an entirely strange language to me at the time. French and French-learning were like the key to a broader outside world, enabling me to see differences between Chinese and Western cultures, by which I became aware of China’s position in the world and of the significance of the Chinese civilization in the world history. More than 40 years have elapsed since my first contact with the world outside China. And drawing on over forty years of learning and experience, I have observed that throughout different periods, our understanding of civilizations and of our own position in the world and in history has been constantly changing.
However, the only unchanged is that China is one of the great ancient civilizations in human history. Moreover, we’ve been exploring how to preserve and develop an ancient civilization like China to benefit humanity at large. At the ceremony for the 600th anniversary of the Forbidden City, Mr. Shan Jixiang, the then-director of the Palace Museum, said that the Palace Museum is housed in the 600-year-old Forbidden City; the staff of the Palace Museum are therefore burdened with the responsibility to hand it down to future generations.
I am fascinated by Shan’s idea. And I draw inspiration from the Forbidden City for the title of my speed today. I am honored to have been an invited guest to a French-language TV documentary series on cultural heritage and history; and the program is the only foreign TV production permitted to film in the Forbidden City. I introduced Chinese culture to French audience in this TV production titled “Des racines et des ailes,” literally meaning “Roots and Wings.” The concept “roots and wings” is most illuminating. Every single ethnic group, every single nation, and humanity as a whole, have their own “roots” and origins, whereas every civilization has evolved amid emerging challenges and opportunities, a dynamic that acts like “wings” giving an uplifting power to the civilization. “Roots and wings” may sound like a paradox. “Roots” inevitably conjures the image of a tree, and trees remain rooted in place. On the other hand, “wings” give us an imagination of birds, and birds are never “rooted.” Yet, when it comes to an ancient civilization, roots and wings go together, and they are an essential combination.
I just mentioned the 1980s. And something remarkable happened in 1980. The Académie Française, or the French Academy, is a prestigious French cultural and academic institution. In the year of 1980, the Academy elected its first female member. Over its history of more than 340 years, the Academy had never elected a female member before the novelist Marguerite Yourcenar. This was a momentous event at the time.
Why I mention Yourcenar here? Because Yourcenar published a short story collection Nouvelles orientales (Oriental Tales). I have no time to go into detail today, but I strongly recommend this book. When I first read the book among other foreign literature during my time studying French in Peking University, it enlightened me: We are in the East indeed, like what Yourcenar described. And later when I read Saïd’s Orientalism, I obtained a deeper understanding of what “Orient” truly means. China is historically known as the Middel Kingdom. Despite varying interpretations from historians and diverse translations from translators, we see the world from a perspective anchored in our own civilization.
In fact, every single nation and every single civilization sees the world from a perspective anchored in their own context. But one has to be positioned within others’ coordinate systems; that is, you are either west, east, north, or south of someone else. There are many relative geographical designations, such as the Global South—a relative geographical designation that may take on new significance. Similarly, the West and the East, including the commonly called Eastern Europe and Western Europe, are designations not strictly aligning with geographical reality. Moreover, “Western countries” remains a general term to describe the United States and some major European countries. However, the designation seems no longer applicable to the global landscape today. Now I am standing on the land of Central Asia, the geographical center of the Eurasian continent. But to someone in Europe, Central Asia is in the east. By this logic, Central Asia should have been in Yourcenar’s narratives in her Nouvelles orientales. However, I came to aware that the erudite and cosmopolitan novelist wrote stories about countries east to Europe, including Egypt, Turkey, India, and Japan. And she started her book with a China-related story, which is the best known one. Yet, the vast expanse of Turkey, Iran, and adjacent regions were left blank in Yourcenar’s stories. I was wondering why. Were there no stories worth to be told or recorded? Gradually, I grew aware of the fact that Central Asia had long been neglected in the Western narratives.
Erika Fatland is a Norwegian traveler and bestselling author. Her travel book Sovietistan takes the reader on a journey through Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. It is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years. Fatland impresses the reader with the image of a terra incognito, “I felt as if I were on a strange planet, surrounded by desolation.”
Roots and wings constitute the imagery of difference between agricultural and nomadic peoples. Sedentary societies are rooted in and tied to their land, whereas nomadic peoples keep roaming. Today, when we look at ancient civilizations, questions come naturally to us: Are nomadic peoples rootless? Is the vast expanse Central Asia inherently unknowable? The Belt and Road Initiative enables us to see a broader picture with a transformed cognitive framework, and that’s why Central Asia is coming into view of the Chinese and the international communities at large. I am glad to see H.E. Djoomart Otorbaev, former prime minister of Kyrgyzstan again today. I’ve benefited greatly every time I had the privilege of meeting with him. We are good friends. I am here today, to fill in a gap in my knowledge of Central Asia, through personal experience and observation of this vast land of distinctive and distinguished cultures.
There is neither central nor peripheral civilization. Nomadic peoples have their own roots. Here, I am thinking about another great author Chingiz Aitmatov. He published the novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years in 1980. I think this novel deserves a Nobel Prize. The novel tells how the protagonist tries to give his friend a proper burial, and the story takes place over a single day and night. The story of the present is woven with the history of Central Asia, particularly the history of his homeland Kyrgyzstan. Aitmatov integrates legend, history, and sci-fi elements in the novel.
Before coming to the forum, I read Aitmatov again and found something new. In the 1980s, the prestigious French writer Louis Aragon translated Aitmatov’s short story Jamila into French and hailed it as “the most beautiful love story in the world.” Looking at Aragon’s comments on Aitmatov, I felt how provincial I once was. At the time, I focused on “the West,” while eminent figures there kept an eye on Central Asia and did what they could for exchanges between different cultures. AI poses increasingly stronger challenges to the current world, while humanities and social sciences are diminishing. Against such a backdrop, I feel grateful to literature and humanities, because they make us see that there is no inferior or superior culture in the world, only the valued and the neglected. Some cultures have been always there. They are not in the periphery. Every culture is at the center of its own; it is only that we are unwilling or unable to see it. I believe that ancient civilizations have the ability to navigate this world full of advanced technologies and map out their own positions in interaction and correlation with each other. They are neither inferior nor superior to one another in a landscape of dialogue without center or periphery. In actuality, we should not easily surrender our roots to technological advancement. Nomadic peoples have their own roots, and agricultural peoples have their own wings. Our roots in historical and cultural legacy which acts as the wings lifting up ancient civilizations in future.
The title, The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years, is an allusion to a line from Boris Pasternak—“Eternal, endless is the day/And the embrace is never-ending.” Distinguished guests and my dear colleagues, I believe that civilizations will keep learning from each other and embracing each other. The embraces never cease. Roots and wings will be in combination and harmony. Every culture in the world stands as the center of its own. No culture will be relegated to the periphery. Only in this way can humanity witness shared development.
Thank you for listening.
