On November 5th, SUN Yuxi, the present Special Envoy to Afghanistan, former Spokesman of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former Chinese Ambassador to Afghanistan, India, Poland and Italy, visited GDUFS and delivered a speech to students. Titled Envoy’s Diplomacy Practice, SUN Yuxi shared many of his stories about his experience as an envoy over 38 years. The lecture was held at the Lecture Hall of the Library at North Campus, presided over by Vice President SHI Youqi.

Envoy SUN Yuxi has been engaged in diplomacy for 38 years and has visited 138 countries. He made great contributions to the peace of China and other countries. In the lecture, he showed lots of his pictures of diplomacy, telling interesting stories about the pictures. Students crowded in the lecture hall, listening carefully and applauded from time to time.

SUN Yuxi Speaking

SUN Yuxi mentioned in his speech that the most significant thing he had done in India was suggesting the establishment of Xuanzang Memorial. As Xuanzang’s story was well known in India, he decided to improve China-India communication through Xuanzang. In the first year of China-India Culture Year, he proposed building Xuanzang Memorial and was approved, which facilitated the spread of Buddhism in India. To take advantage of mutual cultural cognition, he even delivered a speech at the universities of India to talk about the similarities between Buddhism and Marxism. “The pursuit of Buddhism is universal salvation, which is the same as Marxism’s liberation of all human beings. They are all developing and updating as time goes by.” His speech made Indians more open to Marxism, improving Indians’ recognition of cultural identity to China.

Experienced as he was, Envoy SUN Yuxi has also met a lot of difficulties. He recalled that before the Beijing Olympic Games, China was in a serious international situation. At that time, the Cardinal of Italy held a concert. Before the concert, he had a talk with the cardinal for several minutes, expressing his wishes for China-Vatican relationship. He mentioned Beijing Olympic Games and successively persuaded the cardinal into supporting China for this event. The cardinal indicated his support on Beijing Olympic Games, which caught the attention of other countries and won their support.

At the Q&A section, GDUFS students asked questions actively. SUN Yuxi gave a lot of pertinent advice to students by talking about his experience in the university. He emphasized that students should learn about the culture through the language of a country instead of purely learning language in isolation.

The lecture