BEIJING, May 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A news report from Global Times:
【Gary Sigley, former director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Western Australia, professor of the Australian Studies Center, Beijing Foreign Studies University】
China is the origin of tea and the origin of tea culture. I would say that China has the richest and most diverse tea culture anywhere in the world. China already has a lot of resources to share.
But what I think is also important is that China's role here is not to tell everyone, "you need to be like us. Our tea culture is the best tea culture." So I think this is a platform where China can say: "we have a very important tea culture here, but we also would like to learn about the experiences and the tea cultures of people around the world." So (it) provides a platform to share those experiences in a way that conforms and fits in with the ethics and the objectives of the Hehe culture.
"From my perspective as an Australian scholar, the Western culture has tended to say that our way the Western way is the best way. So I think there are a lot of problems with this approach."
If we're going to go to a multipolar world, we need to have a way in which we can respect each other's cultures, and not say yours is better or yours is less worthy.
I think that's the advantage of a Chinese approach: We have all these different civilizations around the world communicating with each other, he (cooperation), seeking a way to be he (harmonious).
