Experts: World needs table where all have seat, voice

As global tensions rise and talk of "clashes of civilization" resurfaces in political discourse, scholars from around the world gathered in Beijing with a shared view: The planet doesn't need a dominant civilization, but rather a table where all have a seat and a voice.

Such remarks were made on Friday during a subforum called Inter-Civilization Exchanges and Mutual Learning: Academic Dialogue, as part of the two-day Global Civilizations Dialogue Ministerial Meeting held in Beijing starting on Thursday. More than 100 participants from over 20 countries — including Australia, Portugal and Argentina — joined the discussion.

Among the voices at the subforum was Liljana Arsovska, a professor at the Center for the Study of Asia and Africa at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. She said that for decades, Latin America's understanding of China has largely been filtered through English or French — languages that, while valuable, often distort the deeper realities of a civilization.