On April 25th, President of Shandong University Xu Xianming met with visiting Prof. Joseph Nye, university distinguished service professor at Harvard University, former Dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and also the founder of neo-liberalism theory in international relations and coiner of the term "soft power".

In the meeting, Xu expressed his warm welcome to Prof. Nye's visiting and thanked him for his excellent report on "Soft power and Confucianism". Xu also briefly introduced the history of the connection and cooperation between Shandong University and American universities, and what Shandong University had done to promote exchange student programs between China and the U.S.

Xu introduced the core position of the Confucianism in the Chinese traditional culture and stressed the value of the Confucianism study in the contemporary era. He focused on introducing the research fields and key researches of the Confucianism for the Institute for Advanced Study of Shandong University and the aspiration to build a world-class International Confucianism Study Centre.

Prof. Nye identified with the comment Xu made on the importance of the Confucianism study and he believed that the development of research on Confucianism and the wide spread of Confucianism had strengthened China's soft power.

Furthermore, Xu expressed his belief that compared to governments and companies, universities have an indispensable effect and advantage in the process of promoting the fusion of different civilizations.

Xu also had a discussion with Prof. Nye, exchanging ideas on the cooperation in humanities fields between Shandong University and Harvard University.

Kong Lingdong, Director of Development Planning Department of SDU, and Tong Guangwu, Director of International Office of SDU, also attended the meeting.

Written by: Liu Yakun

Photo by: Sun Fengshou

Edited by: Lawrence Phillips, Jing Zizhao

Source:www.en.sdu.edu.cn,www.view.sdu.edu.cn