Ethnic Cultures in the 21st Century: Between Tradition and Modernity
 

Rafael Henrique Zerbetto

Brazil
 

Foreign Correspondent and Language Consultant of (People's China Magazine and China Report Magazine of) the Asia-Pacific Communication Center of China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration

 

Culture is an endless process of evolution and adaptation to the times. Along history, different nationalities have been exchanging and learning from each other. Ethnic cultures always adapted themselves to the times and found innovative ways to be inherited by the new generations. Culture must also adapt itself to the moral standards of the times, and Tibet had great advances in this aspect along the last seven decades. All ethnic groups of China deserve to enjoy the benefits of national development and share a common challenge in the 21st century: Adapt themselves to the times.

 

Culture is an endless process of evolution and adaptation to the times. This may look like a paradox, but innovation is needed to preserve and inherit traditions. Human history is a history of mutually beneficial cultural exchanges between different nationalities. One of the roots of discrimination against ethnic groups is the misconcept that they should refuse technology and the comfortable life provided by modernity in order to preserve their traditional way of life. We are all humans and must have the right to choose by ourselves what kind of life we want.

 

Culture must also adapt itself to the development of ethics. Cannibalism, for example, does not suit the moral standards of our time, even though it was part of many ethnic cultures of the world in the past. In the last century, China abandoned footbinding - a painful practice of reshaping and resizing women’s feet - and also stopped the castration of men to produce eunuchs. Those two cultural traditions are lost because they became incompatible with the moral standards of our time.

 

Also Tibet adopted higher moral standards after the peaceful liberation of Xizang and the democratic reform: serfdom was abolished, women were allowed to go to school and university, land was confiscated from landlords and distributed between those who till it. The Tibetan society prior to 1951 was obviously incompatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - accepted by the UN in 1948 and recognized as a milestone in the history of human and civil rights.

 

From 1951 to the present days, the standard of living in Tibet has improved significantly. Life expectancy grew from 35.5 years to more than 71 years, while

 

Tibetan GDP grew from 174 million RMB to 190 billion RMB. In 1951, 95% of people in Tibet were illiterated, nowadays 99% of the tibetan population can read and write.

 

Ethnic groups must not be seen as “living museums” and must not be left behind. They also deserve to enjoy the benefits of the development of China. Chinese ethnic groups have a long history of coexistence, exchanges and cooperation, and share a common challenge in the 21st century: Adapt themselves to the times. Innovation is the key to make the new generations inherit traditional and ethnic culture; and forging a stronger spirit of national union is the common need of Chinese ethnic groups to build together a Community of Shared Future.