This Tuesday TDM – Teledifusão de Macau signed cooperation agreements with four television stations from Portuguese-speaking countries. These memorandums bring programs translated into Portuguese about “Chinese culture and the technological advances taking place in China” to the Lusophone world.
When discussing Macau’s role as a Sino-Lusophone bridge, the importance of the local media cannot be ignored. The equation is not only political and economic. In fact, the cultural and news component is, as a rule, what builds and dismantles many of the walls that stand in the way of understanding between peoples. The dissemination of Chinese culture, its history, way of acting and thinking results in a better understanding of the reality experienced in China. What’s more, it also reveals what a complex and more diverse country China is than it appears to the outside world.
Cold War aside, the modern world has never been so divided. Globalization was perhaps too fast, and today we are reaping the rewards – most of them rotten. There are difficulties in accepting different cultures. The current backdrop is war, both warlike and commercial, but the manipulation of cultural elements serves (and has always served) as a weapon to distance peoples. Efforts at protectionism and national security are growing. What comes from outside is more easily identified as a threat than a complement. China is inevitably one of the countries stepping onto this destructuring stage and taking on the role of protagonist.
That’s why these content exchanges, models on which PLATAFORMA itself was built and is still building today, are vital to repairing the cracks that exist and preventing future ones. Let’s not kid ourselves: there are points on which there will never be an understanding. But, as the rapprochement between the United States and China proves, cooperation can and must be achieved even when both sides recognize that there are areas where they will never reach consensus. This mindset is crucial for mutual development.
That said, cultural understanding is a good starting point for beginning and re-establishing relations. In addition to the barriers not being so limiting, it shields people from the blindness caused by labels of interest and political and commercial nature.
Executive Director of PLATAFORMA*
