Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.6, 2018

The New Development Concept and Cultural Confidence

(Abstract)

Xiang Jiuyu

A country’s hard and soft power is decisive for the formation of its overall power structure and a basic criterion for its identity and endogenous selfconfidence. The new development concept means that the CPC, under the direction of Marxism and against the background of China’s fine traditional culture, not only serves to develop China’s hard power, but also contributes Chinese wisdom and solutions to the development of all of mankind, highlighting the vitality of Chinese development and the creativity of Chinese culture. In terms of its “tower structure,” the object foundation of cultural selfconfidence includes the fine traditional culture that serves as its foundation, the revolutionary culture that serves as its backbone, and the advanced socialist culture that consolidates and guides it. The degree of cultural confidence depends upon the players’ cognition and recognition of this object foundation. The new development concept has a profound interactive relationship with cultural confidence. The former seeks to tap the potential of China’s hard power in the new era and drive the development of that power, while the latter aims to enhance cultural soft power and comprehensively increase national identity and self-confidence. Thus, on the one hand, the new development concept provides a guiding program for promoting the development of Chinese culture and the necessary hard power basis for the generation of cultural confidence; on the other, cultural confidence supplies endogenous value identification resources for the new development concept of and reacts, as soft power, with the enhancement of contemporary Chinese hard power under the guidance of the new development concept. This indicates that the inherent interaction and deep resonance of the new development concept and cultural confidence constitute the core thread of the generation of China’s overall power.