make the world know China

一月 16, 2006

Last night I watched the ‘Dialogue’ , which is a very pop ‘talk show’ TV program of CCTV2. the topic of this issue is ‘how to make the world know China’. Zhao Qi-zheng and He Dele were invited as honored guests.

So far, China has become the 6th largest economic entity in the world. but how much on earth does the world know China? I have been in BBC Learning English discusion group for several months and there was a topic on China last November. People from other place of the world, most of which did not come to China, told their impression of China. In their mind, China is a large country with huge population, long history and it is a socialism country in which people are lack of political freedom and not well educated. Some people even do not know the relationship among Mainland, Taiwan, Hongkong and Macao. During the ‘Dialogue’, a guest told us a story. he said when he first arrived in America, an american told him he was not like a Chinese. he was amazing and asked the american why he felt like that. the american said Chinese should wear gown like the actor in the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".

all that above make a conclusion that the world does not know China enough or the world has a misunderstanding of China in some fields. Zhao Qi-zheng said the reason why the world know less of China is not simple. First of all, the Chinese character is difficult to study and understand. Compared to other characters in the world, Chinese charactor has more implications, which makes the traslation more hard and less accurate. Secondly, some media reports are not based on fact. The media here is a word in general, which includes TV, radio, paper, movie, internet and so on… For the some benefit some foreign media report negatively which makes some people misunderstand China. Last but not least, the behavior of some international corporations of China have a great direct influence on knowing China. these corps in foreign countries are representatives of China just like Mcdonald is a representiative of United States in China.

He Dele added a new point that reference book is also a tool to know China. As the editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica, he make his effort to make people around the world know a true China through the Encyclopaedia Britannica and now there are over 2000 issues about China collected in the book.

Making the world know China is not the responsibility of some people, but the responsibility of every Chinese people. Pay more attention to your daily life and you may find more chance to show a true China to the world.

[people]
Zhao Qizheng – the news office director of the council
He Dele – the editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica

[new words to me]
anchorman – 新闻节目主持人
honored guest – 嘉宾
gown – 长袍