The Director of Political Affairs at the Chinese Embassy in Accra, Lau Danzhu, has reaffirmed China’s commitment to strengthening exchanges and cooperation on all fronts with African countries.
She said the Asian giant’s approach on the continent is to pursue a just cause together with its partners, while deepening interactions to expand the convergence of ideas and interests.
According to her, the world’s second-largest economy – being a staunch advocate and active practitioner of the common values – has for thousands of years developed a mind-set of respecting the diversity of civilisations, forming a paradigm of diversity in harmony.
Speaking to the B&FT on the side-lines of China’s Global Civilisation Initiative forum held at the Confucius Institute, University of Ghana (UG) in Accra, Ms. Danzhu noted that it is high time that China and Africa leveraged each other’s strength and pressed ahead toward common development and rejuvenation, and truly build a China-Africa community with a shared future in the new era.
The event was on the theme China’s Global Civilisation Initiative: a new paradigm for building global peace and prosperity.
The Global Civilisation Initiative (GCI) advocates respect for the diversity of civilisations, the common values of humanity, the importance of inheritance and innovation of civilisations, as well as robust international people-to-people exchanges and cooperation.
With respect to China-Ghana relations, she noted that the two countries have not only supported each other since the fight for national liberation and independence, but have also pursued common development while forging an unbreakable fraternal relationship.
“As both developing countries with shared past experiences and common interests, China and Ghana have always been good friends, partners and brothers, and the people-to-people exchanges and cooperation between the two countries have developed in depth,” she further said.
Touting achievements of the superpower regarding its relationship with Ghana, she revealed that over 6,500 Ghanaian students are studying in China, ranking them second among African countries, adding that: “Two Confucius Institutes have been established, and more than ten thousand Ghanaian students are studying Chinese in Ghana”.
Additionally, she stated that in today’s world – wherein the future of all countries are closely connected, the roles of tolerance, coexistence, exchanges and mutual learning in advancing humanity’s modernisation process are irreplaceable, condemning the proclivity of some countries wanting to forcefully impose their own values and models on others out of selfish interest under the pretext of decoupling or ‘de-risking’.
“The Cold War mentality is resurging. The dregs of ‘theory of civilisation superiority’ and ‘theory of clash of civilisations’ are once again stirred up. Whether countries will have confrontation or shared prosperity, and whether history will go backward or forward, depends to a large extent on how we view and deal with the differences among different civilisations,” Ms. Danzhu elaborated.
