The 2018 World Canal Cities Forum, a gathering co-organized by the World Historic and Cultural Canal Cities Cooperation Organization and the China National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation, was held in Yangzhou on Thursday and Friday. Based on the theme "protection, inheritance and use of the world canal cityculture," the forum is aimed to bring together canal-bonded cities and urban economies worldwide for the purposes of exploring the inheritance of the canal legacy.
Zheng Jianbang, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and executive vice chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang, made a keynote speech and announced the opening of the forum.
Present at the ceremony were Wang Jiarui, former Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and Chairman of the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation, Lou Qinjian, Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee and head of the Provincial Grand Canal Cultural Belt Construction Leading Team, and Brian Cowan, WCCO Honorary Chairman and former Irish Prime Minister.
Before the opening of the forum, Lou Qinjian met with Brian Cowan and other foreign guests and on behalf of the provincial party committee and the provincial government extended his warm welcome to all the guests.
Lou said that the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is a flowing culture and a living culture as the millennium-old canal still plays an important role in Jiangsu's economic and social development.
He said the Grand Canal carries more and more functions with the development of the economy and society, adding that it is the compelling obligation and realistic need for us to give better play to the protection, inheritance and utilization of this precious heritage left to us by the ancestors.
The CPC Provincial chief noted that the Grand Canal runs through Jiangsu and belongs to China and the world, adding that the province will use the canal as a medium and the World Canal City Forum as the platform to promote the construction of the Jiangsu Grand Canal cultural belt and make it a high-quality and distinctive symbol of Jiangsu's cultural construction.
He urged for greater efforts to deepen the exchanges and cooperation and promote reciprocal cultural understanding between the world's canal cities with particular focus laid on learning from the successful experiences of the world's canal cities in the protection and utilization of the canal culture, and establishing a pragmatic mechanism to promote the development and cooperation of culture tourism between the world's canal cities so as to create a better future for development.
Brian Cowan said that the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is the earliest and longest canal in the world. The Chinese Grand Canal culture has an important position in the world's canal culture so that its history and culture should be made familiar to more people around the world. Canal cities around the world should focus on the future to strengthen exchanges and cooperation.
The World Historic and Cultural Canal Cities Cooperation Organization is willing to support the exploration of the stories of the Grand Canal and promote the close cooperation of the world's canal cities, so that different languages and cultures can be integrated and developed in the context of the Grand Canal.
Zheng Jianbang said in the keynote speech that the canal culture is an important part of human civilization. Jiangsu has proposed to promote the construction of the Grand Canal cultural belt in the section of the Grand Canal in Jiangsu so as to highlight the province’s leading role in the protection of cultural heritage, the promotion of cultural values, and the restoration of ecological protection. This is a concrete measure to thoroughly implement the spirit of President Xi Jinping’s important instructions, and also the vivid practice of comprehensively protecting and utilizing the Grand Canal.
He said good top-down design and overall coordination is needed for the high-quality promotion of the construction of the Grand Canal cultural belt through the release of relevant support policies and rational, orderly and innovative development so as to transform the cultural advantages of the canal into development advantages. The cultural spirit of communication, tolerance, integration, openness and innovation of the Grand Canal of China will surely become a bridge and messenger of China's integration with the world and become the common language of dialogue between China and the world, he added.
The forum is based on the theme "protection, inheritance and use of the world canal cityculture". Qian Hongshan, deputy director of the International Liaison Department of the CPC Central Committee, spoke at the forum.
Vice Governor Wang Jiang delivered a speech on behalf of the provincial party committee and the provincial government.
Zhou Wenzhong, WCCO's Chief Consultant and former Secretary-General of the Boao Forum for Asia, and some other guests delivered speeches concerning the development and cooperation of the World Canal Cities Forum, the construction of the Chinese Grand Canal Cultural Belt, and the construction of the Jiangsu Demonstration Section of the Grand Canal National Cultural Park.
The Grand Canal is well known in the world as a great water conservancy project, and it is an outstanding masterpiece of the human beings, according to unesco.org.
(Source: ourjiangsu.com)
