Saying there was “no clash” of civilizations, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday denounced racial supremacy as “stupid” amid tensions with the US and concerns over Beijing’s rising global power.
His remarks came after a top US official last month described the rivalry between China and the US as “a fight with a really different civilization and a different ideology.”
Kiron Skinner, the director of policy planning at the US Department of State, put it in racial terms, telling a security forum that China was the first US “great power competitor that is not Caucasian.”
Photo: Reuters
“Thinking that one’s own race and culture are superior, and insisting on transforming or even replacing other civilizations is stupid in its understanding and disastrous in practice,” Xi said at the opening ceremony of the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations in Beijing.
It was Xi’s first public address since trade tensions with the US spiked last week. The two nations are locked in an escalating trade dispute, with both levying tariffs on each other’s imports.
Beijing on Monday announced higher tariffs on US$60 billion of US goods, effective on June 1, in retaliation for a US decision on Friday last week to raise levies on US$200 billion of Chinese imports.
Just before Xi spoke, the government reported surprisingly weaker growth in retail sales and industrial output for last month.
Xi made no direct reference to the trade tension, focusing instead on presenting China as a non-threatening country open to all.
China has a glorious history of being open to the world and it would only be more open, Xi said.
Chinese civilization was an “open system” that had continuously had exchanges and learned from other cultures, including Buddhism, Marxism and Islam, he said.
“Today’s China is not only China’s China. It is Asia’s China and the world’s China. China in the future will take on an even more open stance to embrace the world,” he added.
No country could stand alone, Xi said, perhaps taking an indirect swipe at US President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy.
“Civilizations will lose vitality if countries go back to isolation and cut themselves off from the rest of the world,” Xi said.
“The people of Asian countries hope to distance themselves from being closed, and hope that all countries will adhere to the spirit of openness and promote policy communication, connectivity and smooth trade.”
Xi offered no new concrete measures to open China up, aside from proposing an Asia tourism promotion plan, and even on that he gave no details.
Officials have billed the forum as part of a soft power push to put a gentler face on China’s growing might, though it only attracted a handful of foreign leaders to the opening session, at which Xi spoke, including the presidents of Greece, Sri Lanka and Singapore.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS