Connecting East Asia, embracing the world: contemporary echoes of Confucian dialogue
On August 7, the keynote speech and outcomes-release conference of the 2026 "Chinese Learning of the Heart-Mind and the World, An East Asian Dialogue on Confucianism" were held at the Confucius Academy in Guiyang, where the academic outcomes from the weeklong series of academic conversations were presented. Guided by the International Confucian Association (ICA), the event was co-hosted by the Guiyang Confucius Academy Cultural Communication Center, the East Asian Classics Research Institute of Zhusi Academy at Qufu Normal University, and the Ma Yifu Academy of Zhejiang University. The series included one press briefing, ten roundtable dialogues, one keynote speech, and the outcomes-release conference, alongside field study tours focusing on Yangming culture.
A scene from the 2026 "Chinese Learning of the Heart-Mind and the World, An East Asian Dialogue on Confucianism” at the Confucius Academy in GuiyangAt the outcomes-release session, Kung Tsui-chang, the 79th-generation direct descendant of Confucius and President of the Confucius Foundation, delivered a speech. He noted, "East Asian Confucianism forms the spiritual bond of East Asian civilization. Its core tenets such as 'harmony without uniformity', 'great universal commonwealth', and 'benevolence towards people and care for all creatures' offer profound insights into the diversity, coexistence and shared prosperity of human civilizations." He stressed, "What civilizations around the world need today is not estrangement and confrontation, but dialogue and mutual learning - and Confucianism offers exactly such wisdom and breadth of vision for cross-civilizational exchange." He commented that this conversation "is more than an academic exchange; it is an intellectual voyage transcending national boundaries and bridging the past and the present - enabling Confucian wisdom to travel from scholarly studies into public life, and from East Asia to the world."
