Highlight - Benevolence in Confucianism inspires harmony among countries

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During his speech at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Qingdao, President Xi Jinping called for all countries to respect one another's choice of development paths and to accommodate one another's core interests and major concerns.

Each state should enhance mutual understanding by putting itself in others' positions and promote harmony and unity by seeking common ground and setting aside differences.

President Xi's words and thought on the relationship between and among different countries are deeply influenced by the concepts of benevolence and harmony in traditional Confucianism.

What's the origin of China's benevolence and harmony? How have they influenced China's foreign policy? How could harmony and benevolence be applied in modern society? Robert Lawrence Kuhn discussed these ideas with Professor Bai Tongdong, School of Philosophy, Fudan University.

Thousands of years ago, China's great sage Confucius put forward the idea of harmony and benevolence to promote good interpersonal relationships among people.

Confucius' benevolence consists of two significant elements. One is to love people. First, love your family, then love other people; this is also regarded as the essence of benevolence.

And through this process, people learn to understand and care for each other, and in the process, society will become more harmonious.

As China's economic might grows, the country is looking forward to shouldering more responsibilities.

The country aims to promote the idea of "a shared future for all mankind". Analysts believe that idea is rooted in Chinese love for their family.

Solidarity: the harmony between different peoples. /VCG Photo

According to Professor Bai, the application of Confucianism for interpersonal relationships among human beings could reach even farther.

He mentioned one of Confucius' famous saying: the way of realizing humanness and benevolence is to find energy from what is near at hand.

So how do we learn to care about our countrymen since most of them are strangers?

Here Professor Bai interprets Confucius' claim. For example, we can learn to care about strangers by first learning to care about our family members, and then if we can develop a sense of empathy or sympathy, we could promulgate this idea more widely, and gradually we can embrace all people in our state, and eventually, all people in the world.

From what he called the sense of sympathy or empathy, countries throughout the world will enjoy good relationship and enhance mutual understanding.

China states that its foreign policy reflects elements such as respect, trust, understanding, peace and so on, all of which reflect the idea of harmony and benevolence in traditional Confucianism.