ZHENGZHOU–Academics put forward a wide range of perspectives on Asian studies at the First High-Level Forum on Asian Civilization held in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, in mid-June.

Studies of Asian civilization have long been subject to modern Western centrism. Given this research status, Wu Yin, a research fellow from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), called on Chinese scholars to break away from the perspective of Western scholars as “bystanders” and focus on realistic national concerns as “persons concerned” to raise new opinions and solve new problems, thus intensifying research on exchanges and mutual learning among Asian civilizations.

Civilizations usually span national and regional boundaries, so it is insufficient to define Asia and understand its civilizational intensions through geography, economy, and history. Wei Chuxiong, a research fellow from the Urban Culture Research Center at Shanghai Normal University, underscored the necessity to reconstruct Asian studies by shifting from external, imperialist, and orientalist angles to internal, indigenous, and local perspectives.

Regional civilizations not only signify processes of evolution within certain borders, but exchanges and mutual learning among diverse regional cultures are crucial factors for civilizational formation and offer a key perspective for reexamining the development of regional civilizations. Regarding the close relations between early Japanese civilization and the outside world, Xu Jianxin, a research fellow from the Institute of World History at CASS, noted that Chinese civilization has always been the largest frame of reference and most important “other” to Japan.

The history of world civilization reveals the significant contributions of various Chinese inventions to its overall development. However, the invention of Chinese characters in particular has not received adequate attention in the civilizational sense. Wang Yong, deputy director of the Institute of Asian Civilizations at Zhejiang University, said that the invention of Chinese characters by legendary figure Cang Jie not only played a transformative role in elevating Huaxia [synonymous with China] from a state of barbarism to that of a civilized society, but also exerted influence on other countries in East Asia, such as Japan and Korea. Chinese characters served as a unified writingsystem for East Asia and thus hold immense significance as a symbol of East Asian civilizations, Wang said.

Ge Jiyong, executive director of the Institute of Asian Studies at Zhengzhou University, observed that Chinese civilization integrated and interacted with surrounding civilizations through different mechanisms prior to modern times. For example, it exerted significant impact on the “maritime world of East Asia,” but its impact in the “Western Regions” was relatively limited. Ge suggested switching focus from specific countries to geographical areas when studying civilizational dissemination in the former case, while paying heed to the unique mechanism of Chinese civilization’s interaction with Indian, Persian, and even Arab civilizations when examining inter-civilizational exchanges in the latter.

After analyzing the course of mutual learning between Iranian and Chinese civilizations, Ji Kaiyun, director of the Center for Iranian Studies at Southwest University, said that the two civilizations encountering each other during the Parthian Empire in the 2nd century BCE heralded more than 2,000 years of interaction, exchanges, and mutual learning on an equal footing, bringing cultural prosperity to the two ancient civilizations. Ji further emphasized the profound influence of Chinese painting, traditional medicine, and porcelain craftsmanship on Iranian civilization.

The forum was hosted by Zhengzhou University and jointly organized by the university’s School of International Studies and Institute of Asian Studies.