On March 30, 2017, the Fudan EMBA Forum of Humanities was held in our School. British historian, Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and author of the bestseller The Silk Roads: A New History of the World Peter Frankopan and senior professor at Fudan University and member of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee Jianxiong GE made keynote speeches and participated in the roundtable discussion.

At the beginning of activity, Associate Dean Zhiwen YIN gave a speech on behalf of the organizers. He thought the successful staging of this activity was benefited by cooperative partners’ strong support, which manifested the current era’s spirit of openness, cooperation and sharing and showed the unique charm of a 100-year-old famous university’s cultural traditions.

Prof. Peter Frankopan’s keynote speech titled The Past and Present of the Silk Roads kicked off the lecture. Prof. Peter Frankopan is a well-known British scholar engaging in Middle East, Central Asia, Russia and Byzantine research and controlling a series of family enterprises in Britain, France, Croatia, the Netherlands, etc. and a Governor of Wellington College. He pointed out subversively that the Silk Roads were far from trade channels people thought they were. In fact, the past, present and future of man and the world were all closely related to the Silk Roads, which had always been the axes around which the world went around.

Therefore, learning about the history of the Silk Roads was vitally important to understanding today’s world and the direction of man’s future development. In view of the development history of the Silk Roads, a stable political and social environment had been fundamental to their development, and flexible adaptation following trends had been a necessary means of achieving trade, cultural and religious success.

Prof. Jianxiong GE pointed out in his keynote speech titled “The Silk Roads and the ‘Belt and Road’” that though the concept of the “Belt and Road”, i.e. the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “21^st Century Maritime Silk Road”, originates from the Silk Roads in history, the Silk Roads were not opened by Chinese people on their own initiative. The driving forces behind their opening, preservation and development came from the outside.

Ancient China lacked “world outlooks”. In the past, there was only one view on the world, and all Chinese people thought they were at “the center of the world”. On the other hand, because the Chinse agricultural society found a very good geographical environment along the Yellow River Basin very suitable for early development, no demand was exerted on the outside. We must objectively know the exact role played by the Silk Roads in the world in the past instead of limiting our eyesight to Chinese history.

The purpose of the “Belt and Road” strategy implemented by China at present was not to export culture but to propose that cultures should learn from each other. Different cultures should develop freely, show their own charm, respect cultural differences and appreciate each other.

In the link of China-West dialogue, the two guest speakers elaborated their views on hot issues such as China’s position in the “Belt and Road” strategy, trade integration and how to localize enterprises successively. The Eastern and Western views formed a pleasing contrast, demonstrating diversified thinking perspectives to the audience.