The opening meeting of "Vision China", public talks organized by the national English newspaper of China, was held at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) on Monday evening.
The opening event was called "New era through my eyes," and was streamed by China Daily on the internet. More than 500 people from China, as well as other countries, visited the opening.
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"Vision China is an innovative approach by China Daily to tell China's stories to the world and make China's voice better heard," Guo Weimin, vice-minister of the Information Office of the State Council who was also present at the event said.
The inaugural event featured such prominent speakers as US specialist on China Robert Kuhn, China Daily writer Andrew Moody, and China Global Television Network host Liu Xin. They shared their views on China in the new era the world enters with its opportunities and challenges.
"China's entering into a new era could be a momentous turning point in world history. … China's new era is a new and confident China striding forward into a world that it itself would play a large part in shaping," Andrew Moody said commenting on other countries' perception of China.
Robert Kuhn, who has studied this country for nearly 30 years, said that China's new era is full of changes and under President Xi Jinping China has determined its path for the next 30-plus years.
"When future historians reconstruct the long history of China, they will likely circle our years as an epochal period of transition and transformation," Kuhn said.
Jiang Qingzhe, Party chief of the UIBE, told the media in an interview after the event that the Vision China format is "creative and original," since the speakers showed different perspectives of the same topic, which can help college students deeper understand China and the world in the new era.