I sincerely thank President Samos for his kind invitation.
Harvard is a world-famous institution of higher learning, with a collection of elites and talented people. Since its establishment 367 years ago, there have been seven presidents and more than 40 Nobel Prize winners. It's your honor.
Today, I am very happy to stand on the platform of Harvard and communicate with you face to face. I am an ordinary China person. I was born in a teacher's family, my childhood was miserable, and I worked in a hard area in China for a long time. There are 2500 counties (districts) in China, and I have been to 1800. I deeply love my motherland and people.
The topic of my speech today is-Look at China.
China and the United States are far apart, with great differences in economic level and cultural background. I hope my speech can enhance our mutual understanding.
To understand a real, changing and hopeful China, we must understand China's yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Yesterday's China was an ancient civilization.
As we all know, in the history of human development, Babylonian civilization in the two river basins in West Asia, ancient Egyptian civilization in the Nile basin in North Africa, ancient Greek and Roman civilization on the northern shore of the Mediterranean, ancient civilization in the Indus basin in South Asia, Chinese civilization originating in the Yellow River-Yangtze River basin and so on have appeared successively. Due to earthquakes, floods, plagues, famines, foreign invasions and internal turmoil, some of these ancient civilizations declined, some died out, and some merged with other civilizations. Chinese civilization, with its tenacious cohesion and meaningful charm, has gone through vicissitudes and continued completely. It is the pride of China people to have a civilization history of 5,000 years.
China's traditional culture is profound and has a long history. As early as more than 2,000 years ago, Confucianism represented by Confucius and Mencius, Taoism represented by Laozi and Zhuangzi, and many other schools that also have a position in the history of China's thought, this is the famous "a hundred schools of thought contend". From Confucius to Sun Yat-sen, there are many precious things in the traditional culture of the Chinese nation, many people-oriented and democratic good things. For example, it emphasizes benevolence, groups, harmony without difference, and the world for the common good. In particular, the patriotic feelings of "every man is responsible for the rise and fall of the world", the people-oriented thought of "people are the foundation of the country", the way of life of "don't do to others what you don't want others", and the traditional virtues of hard work, thrift and respect for teachers and education have been passed down from generation to generation. All these have played a great role in maintaining and regulating family, country and society.
In September this year 10 China Teachers' Day, I made a special trip to the hospital to visit Ji Xianlin, an old professor at Peking University. He is 92 years old, proficient in Chinese and Western, specializing in Orientalism. I like reading his prose very much. In the heart-to-heart conversation, we talked about the "western learning spreading to the east" and "eastern learning spreading to the west" in modern times. In the 17 and 18 centuries, when foreign missionaries translated China's cultural classics into western languages and spread them to Europe, they aroused great interest from a group of famous western scholars and enlightenment thinkers. Descartes, Leibniz, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Goethe, Kant and so on. Have studied the traditional culture of China.
I read Voltaire when I was young. He said that when a thinker studies the history of this planet, he should first look to the East, including China.
Interestingly, a century and a half ago, Mr. Emerson, a famous philosopher and outstanding Harvard man in your country, also had a special liking for China's traditional culture. He quoted many words from Confucius and Mencius in his article. He also compared Confucius with Socrates and Jesus, arguing that Confucian moral theory "is aimed at a completely different society from ours, but we still benefit a lot from reading it today."
Reviewing these famous sayings of Voltaire and Emerson today, we cannot but be impressed by their wisdom and foresight.
Today's China is a big country with reform, opening up and peaceful rise.
Mr. Fei Zhengqing once described that China is densely populated: a land owned by an American farm has lived in a whole village of several hundred people in China. He also said that although agriculture was the mainstay of Americans in history, they did not feel the pressure of dense population.
Large population and underdevelopment are two national conditions of China. China has a population of 654.38+03 billion. No matter how small the problem is, multiplying it by 654.38+0.3 billion will become a big problem. No matter how considerable the financial and material resources are, as long as they are divided by 654.38+0.3 billion, they will become a very low per capita level. This is something that China's leaders must always keep in mind.
To solve the problem of 65.438+0.3 billion people, we can only rely on ourselves, not others. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, we have made great achievements in construction, but we have also taken some detours and lost some opportunities. Starting from 1978, we finally found a correct road to self-development. That is: China people independently build socialism with China characteristics.
The essence of this road is to mobilize all positive factors, liberate and develop productive forces, and respect and guarantee the freedom of China people to pursue happiness.