Editor's note: Dean and Professor of the Academy of Chinese Learning, Shenzhen University made a keynote speech in the "2020 China (Qufu) International Confucius Cultural Festival and 6th Nishan Forum on World Civilizations" on September 27th. The views are concluded here for readers.

A community with shared future for mankind is a complex, multidimensional, and all-round concept, among which the community of culture lays at the very bottom.

In the history of human development, each civilization system has developed its own characteristics after experiencing its own unique growth process, and the building of a cultural community seeks a commonality in the general sense of human civilization. The acquisition of commonality requires mutual understanding, communication and integration through continuous dialogue and mutual learning among civilizations. Dialogue among civilizations is not only an exchange of information, but also a process of self-recognition. In this regard, Chinese wisdom and Confucian culture can provide its special value for the presentation of a cultural community.

From the unique cosmology of the unity of nature and man to the thoughts of "Five Ethical Forms" valuing ethics and life practice, the important form provided by Confucianism to human society is to emphasize virtue. Therefore, the resilience and inclusiveness of Confucianism suits in pondering over many problems in contemporary society. Since the new century, the global landscape has undergone great changes, and especially after the Covid-19 epidemic, the re-balancing of cultural forces and the uncertainty of future development have greatly intensified the contradictions and conflicts between civilizations. Therefore, the need for dialogue is more urgent than ever before.

Under this circumstances, the reconstruction of moral system is not  repair and transformation of the original, let alone returning to our own enclosed historical illusion, but serious consideration of the universal value of human morality after mutual adaptation and to reconstruct a universal ethic that suits the era today.