In the report to the 20th CPC National Congress, it is stated that “to build a modern socialist country in all respects, we must develop a socialist culture with Chinese characteristics and be more confident in our culture. In our efforts to turn China into a country with a strong socialist culture, we will focus on upholding socialism with Chinese characteristics, rallying public support, fostering a new generation of young people, developing Chinese culture, and better presenting China to the world. We will develop a sound, people-oriented socialist culture for our nation that embraces modernization, the world, and the future. We will ignite the cultural creativity of the entire nation and build a powerful source of inspiration for realizing national rejuvenation.”

How should we develop a new type of culture that adapts to modernization, faces the world, and points the way to the future?

In the past century, three basic types of culture have been observed: an “international” culture which pursues commonality; a “world” culture which pursues diversity; and a “global” culture that pursues diversity amidst commonality.

The international culture that first appeared manifested as Europeanization, which referred to the unity formed by concepts and cultures within European countries. Take the International Congress of Aesthetics (ICA) for an example. The first congress, organized by German philosopher and theorist of aesthetics Max Dessoir, took place in Berlin in 1913. With three official languages—English, German, and French—the congress required all attendees to understand each of these three languages. In this sense, we can say that ICA held a congress where there were no language hurdles, nor cultural differences for attendees. It was a congress of commonality. In an era which encourages internationalization, the approach to unified and refined culture is to draw on each culture’s strengths through mutual learning.

The second cultural archetype is a world culture which implies diversity worldwide. A case in point is the 18th World Congress of Aesthetics held in Peking University in 2010 (with ICA as its predecessor, the name of the congress was changed slightly—the word “international” was replaced by “world”). In addition, the congress took the Chinese language as one of the official languages, but the attendees’ understanding of it was not a requirement. It can be seen that this world culture is not about unity but about maintaining multiple cultural identities and preserving different cultural genes—what belongs to one nation also belongs to the world.

The third culture is a global culture which pursues diversity but is based on a unified platform. Today, internet culture has become the typical form of global culture, and its most important feature is that different cultures can interact and communicate with each other through mutual correlations within the cyber platform.

So how should we define the culture that China needs to develop today—is it a type of international culture, world culture, or global culture? The report to the 20th CPC National Congress emphasizes both the importance of inheriting a fine traditional Chinese culture and the need to promote a human community with a shared future. The combination of the two would generate a new culture—I would define it as human culture rather than a global culture. Different from a global culture, which means a diversified culture based on a unified platform, a human culture pursues unity amidst diversity, and the latter emphasizes the unity of human consciousness rather than the unity of the platform.

Peng Feng is dean and professor from the School of Arts at Peking University.