U.S., Chinese scholars say Chinese academia "open-minded"

As the fourth U.S.-China Cultural Forum was wrapped up on Friday, Chinese and U.S. scholars said that the stereotyped perception of a less open-minded Chinese academia must be broken.

"The understanding, both in the universities or in society at large, about the knowledge- including the teaching materials- about the outside world is much opener," said Ding Wei, Vice Minister of Chinese Ministry of Culture. "We need to keep this openness."

Ding said openness was the key factor that guaranteed the impressive growth that China enjoyed in the past three decades, adding that the future generations in China would continue to be more open.

For Harvard professor Peter Bol, American ignorance, rather than the misleading perception of a less open-minded Chinese society, that hampers cultural communication between the two countries.

"I think that one of the things that you need recognize about China is that America is more important to China at the moment than China is to America ... For most Americans, China is not that important," said Bol, Carswell Professor of East Asian languages and Civilizations in Harvard University. "Of course, for most Americans, most countries outside America are not very important."

"As a country that is intellectually very open, the Cultural Revolution is really over in China," Bol said, adding that all the major modern works in the Western academia about humanity and social science had been published in Chinese. Endite