by Tibor Eliot Rostas
CEO, Editor-in-Chief of SOFIAN, s.r.o., Slovensko
On 16-31 May 2024, we were invited to China on a working trip, where we had the opportunity to delve deeper into the conditions of developing relations between the People’s Republic of China, Slovakia and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Already on the first day, 16 May, we met with the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr Wang Wenbin, who expressed his participation and regret over the then resonating international event – the assassination of Prime Minister Robert Fico. We consider the meeting at the Foreign Ministry to be one of the highlights of our trip, and we would like to build on this friendly level of dialogue at an extremely high level in the near future.
China is gradually emerging out of the fog for people in Central and Eastern Europe as well as for Slovakia. In this sense, it should be stressed that our particular approach to China does not stem from a burden of prejudice, as we are extremely well aware of the capabilities of corporate war propaganda and brainwashing. It is from this point of view that we approach this country with a monumental culture and five thousand years of continuity, where our interest is based on respect and esteem, on which we want to build and revitalise our trust. It is only through the gradual building of trust and a common understanding of the key meanings of the times that we are able to bring the fruits of peaceful coexistence, mutual economic assistance and natural enrichment based on respect for our own cultures and traditions to the generations after us. Only as self-confident can we be respected beyond the horizon of our physical and ideological territory. With this article, we wish to introduce a larger educational series on the path of rapprochement, where conflicts between peoples can be prevented by a more intense understanding. China did not wage conquering imperial wars and did not colonize the West or Europe. The Chinese levied tributes, gifts from the neighborhood, by which they affirmed the emperor’s authority. By 221 A.D., the territory of present-day China was the territory of warring states, ruled by emperors of several dynasties from that time until 1912.
This eastern culture is characterised by an entirely different, collective spirit, as symbolically expressed by the greatest works of construction on the planet – the Great Wall and the Great China Canal, uniting the north and south of China from Beijing to Changzhou. At 1776 km long, the canal is the longest waterway in the world and the Great Wall, with its origins in the 3rd century BC, is the world’s longest structure with a total length of 22 000 km. In this symbolism of the collective spirit brought to the world by the first Qin Shuangzi, who introduced the administration of the empire, public buildings, a unified currency and writing, China is finding a connection after millennia to the most modern and extensive infrastructure that exists in the world. Entirely new megalopolises are emerging in the lowlands that were virtually non-existent two or three decades ago. We have visited several of them, and between them we have had the opportunity to observe life and the landscape in high-speed trains moving at speeds in excess of 300 kilometres per hour. At certain points, watching the dynamism of the country’s development, the parallels evoked for us an analogy with the travelling expeditions of Marco Polo at the end of the thirteenth century – he marvelled at the immense Chinese advance over the then rigidity of the medieval Old Continent.
Thus, if we are talking about the space-time of the present, the central theme of China’s foreign policy is the continuity with its historical Confucian orientation, which was based on avoiding conflicts and wars of mutual conquest with fatal consequences. Drawing not only on Confucius but also on Kant, it can be argued that if states show genuine friendship to each other and abide by it, they will quite naturally develop institutions among themselves that prevent the emergence of war and destruction. In this respect, too, the current principle of the New Silk Road or, in other words, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as the One Belt, One Road initiative, which is arguably the greatest project of the 21st century, presents itself. The European Union and the USA, for quite understandable reasons, harbour, if not animosity towards this project, then at least huge scepticism in view of the inevitable collapse of the notion of maintaining their own standard of living through hegemony over the whole world through war conflicts and the debt-based financial system. But these developments have been transformed in recent decades, and especially in the last decade, into entirely new configurations, where the contours of the Project for a New American Century built on militarism are already collapsing.
The causes and essence of these global processes must be sought in the intrinsic validity of the moribund and self-destructive culture of the West and the disciplined vitality of the Global South. The extent to which these processes are regulated and the extent to which they derive from cultural archetypes of civilization will be discussed in a separate chapter. For now, it is important for us to be part of these processes and to understand them in a wide-ranging context in order to preserve our own identity precisely in the face of the extremely dynamic transformations of civilizational models. Within this context, Slovakia is part of the countries of trade cooperation between China and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. As part of our visit to China, we had the opportunity to participate in this developing partnership at the 8th annual conference of the CEEC Business Cooperation Council in the Chinese trade fair city of Ningbo. Our mission in China was above all to present Slovakia as a nation with talented and extremely resourceful people who deserve a decent job. The export of their skills and quality products begins a new era in a world that is friendly to us. On our visit to China, we met with senior provincial government officials in cities such as Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Shanghai, as well as with major media groups and the China-Central and Eastern Europe Trade Partnership Council.
In doing so, I have consistently stressed that it is essential today to speak of our nation’s desire not to engage in war hysteria that could lead us to global catastrophe. We are running out of time, so we must use all our abilities to stop the warmongers and, even as individuals, show the will to work and live in a peaceful and creative atmosphere that brings contentment to every home and every family. It is in this context that I addressed this peace message to the All-China Journalists Association ACJA and also to the top leaders on May 29, 2024 in Shanghai:
Ladies and gentlemen, in Slovakia, which is the geographical centre of Europe, society is being deliberately divided against itself through the big media spreading brainwashing in the hands of Western capital, to the extent that, as we have seen in the reports of the biggest TV and media outlets here in China, our Prime Minister Robert Fico has been assassinated. I have also spoken about this with the spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and many other officials from the various provinces I have visited. Everywhere they expressed their deep sympathy for this tragedy. Just as I arrived in Beijing, President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China met President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation on 16 and 17 May, while just a few days earlier, President Xi Jinping had visited Hungary and Serbia. These glimpses of light give us hope that partnership with today’s new powers will create better conditions for a multipolar world. My dear friends, the aspiration of our nation at the heart of Europe is to live a free life as a proud Slovakia, proud of its thousand-year history since the days of the Great Moravian Empire. We are a peace-loving nation and have never attacked others, just as neither China nor Russia has waged wars of conquest. We have had bad experiences of the totalitarianism that began to emerge in the West after the fall of the Iron Curtain. I must remind you that Slovakia was bombed by the American air force at the end of the Second World War.
We have had bad experiences with NATO dragging us as accomplices into military conflicts, as in Yugoslavia in 1999, as in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003. I think that China has had its own experience of being an imperial hegemon since the Opium Wars, but also now with regard to American interests in Taiwan, where the situation is about to escalate in the same way as it has managed to bring about the proxy war of the coalition of the West against Russia in Ukraine. Today, this West is fanatically arming itself and trying to drag Slovakia into another of its historic campaigns against Russia. It is thanks to an informed public that we must not let this happen. Dear friends, understanding, friendship and a world without wars and suffering only come about through debate and the ability to express one’s opinion freely. This is precisely the role of a free media in Slovakia, open to relations with the BRICS countries and the Shanghai Trade Cooperation. China is the country with the most convincing dynamics of development, which, however, would never have been possible without peace.
*The views and opinions expressed in the articles are solely those of the individual authors and do not reflect the position of the Secretariat of the Belt and Road Journalist Network.