Name: Ezzat Shahrour, Director, Beijing Office, Al-Jazeera

Title: Camel Thorn on the Silk Roads

Abstract

With China and the Arab world located in the east and west of Asia, geographic distance has been the obstacle to their communication. We need a path to connect China and Arab countries. What we do is by all means to increase understanding between China and Arab countries and elevate their understanding to the level that "good friends, good brothers and good partners" should arrive at.

Many Chinese people divide the world into two spheres—China and foreign countries that they rarely subdivide. There are 193 countries which have their own histories, cultures, religions and customs, rendering it hard to summarize them just by using "foreign". I have noted that, whenever the Chinese people take notice of foreign media, they mainly refer to European and U.S. media. How can they represent all foreign media? The Chinese people sometimes equate foreign countries with the West,

paying little heed to the fact that the world is more than China and the West.

As voices are dominated by the West, China and the Arab world face a common dilemma, which Karl Marx made a reference to in "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte." Edward W. Said opens his "Orientalism" with a quote by Karl Marx: "They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented."

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