The Driving Role of Martial arts in the New Era of China-Africa Cultural Exchanges

Abstract

An old Chinese saying goes, “State-to-state relations thrive when there is friendship between the peoples”. And, friendship between the peoples is determined by how far and how deep they understand each other. In short, affinity between the people holds the key to state-to-state relations, while mutual understanding holds the key to people-to-people relations. Cultural exchanges between nations, primarily aim at achieving that goal. The “New Era of China-Africa Cultural Exchanges” promoted by the Chinese president Xi Jinping through the “Belt and Road Initiative” have speed up closeness of ties and sentiments of friendship between people of China and Africa. However, the Chinese martial arts through Kung fu films, have played a considerable and even earliest role in winning the hearts and minds of the African people, especially from the 70’s Bruce Lee movies, to the today’s Jacky Chan, Jet Li and Donny Yen movies, which essentially use the latest film media technologies to display the Chinese martial arts culture in the finest way, easily acceptable regardless of the moviegoers’ cultural background and languages. Moreover, the martial arts as the crystallization of human’s culture, embodied the quintessence of a nations’ philosophy and wisdom, and then expressed them through a body language in an artistic way.  They are a system of thoughts, knowledge and beliefs, that can be encoded on the body and transmitted from generations to generations. This clearly illustrates that, not only martial arts are inalienable part of human culture, but they possess cross-cultural and cross-languages abilities, and therefore appear as an important driver in the process of cultural exchanges. Africa is known to be the cradle of humankind and the birthplace of earliest civilizations. Due to their unique natural environment and social development processes, African people have developed their own martial arts systems and body’s techniques. With the today’s rapid development of Information Technologies, African martial arts could play a decisive role in popularizing the African culture in China and globally. In a general sense, martial arts can shoulder a significant responsibility in this New Era of China-Africa Cultural Exchanges, and the idea of “Sino-African Kung Fu Films” suggested in this work as an emerging cultural product, could blow a new wind of cooperation between China and Africa, and conquer new markets globally.

Key words: New Era of China-Africa Cultural Exchanges, Martial Arts Culture, Martial Arts Themed Movies, Sino-African Kung Fu Films, Belt and Road Initiative.

DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/105-05

Publication date:November 30^th 2023