China setting pace for economic, cultural growth

ITALIAN Sinologist Federico Masini has borne witness to the rapid and great changes China has undergone.

“I began to study Chinese in 1976,” Masini, director of the Confucius Institute, as well as a Chinese language and literature professor at La Sapienza University in Rome, said.

“I was still in high school at that time, when I developed such an interest in Chinese language, culture and mostly philosophy.”

To have a knowledge of what the real China is, Masini started to study in Beijing in 1982 and later worked in the Italian Embassy in China for several years, during which he witnessed dramatic changes in the country.

“The main difference was in terms of people’s pace of life,” he said, adding that the Chinese people used to “have a very quiet and calm pace of life in comparison with what we had in Europe and in the United States.”

“Now it is exactly the other way around when you travel from Italy to China,” Masini said. “Now you have the feeling of a country that is running much faster than we are in Europe.

“Societies are always changing, but what’s different is the speed of this change. What I have seen is the rapid and great changes in Chinese people’s lives in material and spiritual terms.”

However, Masini said economic development is not the only index to measure the development of a country, and what he values more is people’s life expectancy and quality.

“Fifty years ago, the lifespan of a Chinese was much, much shorter than what it is now,” he said.

Masini’s point is based on facts. According to data from the World Bank, Chinese people’s life expectancy at birth has reached 76 years in 2017, compared to just 44 years in 1960.

Increase mutual knowledge

“Society and economics were made by people, if we want to measure how China has developed in the last decades, I think this is the first thing we have to consider,” Masini said.

He also stressed the importance of scientific and cultural development for China. He believed that China has grown so fast because it realized the importance of zhishi fenzi, which means intellectuals in Chinese.

When it comes to some misunderstandings about China on the part of people from other countries, Masini said “part of the problem was the fact that China was separated from the rest of the world. But this has changed a lot.”

“You fear what you don’t know,” said Masini. “So the best way to avoid any kind of fears by Italians or by any other Westerners about China and the other way around is to increase mutual knowledge.

“If we work together to promote the understanding and exchanges among young people, this will be the best way to prevent any kind of confrontation.”

Referring to the future of China, Masini said: “I’m optimistic. Everybody should be optimistic.”

(Xinhua)