Abstract:

In the time relation of culture, the fulcrum of Xi Jinping’s thought on culture is “keeping integrity and innovation”. Only with right integrity and innovation, cultural self-confidence can be fully conscious. From oral transmission in family and society to simple transmission of aesthetic symbols, cultural inheritance is unconscious when it originates from the initial historical stage of cultural development. Marx’s theory of cultural inheritance overly emphasizes that cultural traditions break down with the rupture of social and economic foundations. Although his cultural policies protected traditional culture, Lenin did not believe in the existence of a unified national culture in theory. Influenced by the New Culture Movement, Mao Zedong criticized traditional culture and then formed a clear theoretical expression, namely “critical inheritance”. In the new era, the cultural image of China has become a prominent problem to be solved urgently with its rise. Xi Jinping’s thought on culture conforms to the needs of the times. On the one hand, the idea of “keeping integrity and innovation” confirms the conscious inheritance of tradition, and acknowledges that cultural confidence is higher than political and theoretical confidence; on the other hand, it replaces “critical inheritance” with a clear value of “keeping integrity”, and then explicitly proposes to innovate the modern civilization of the Chinese nation, inheriting the innovative spirit of the New Culture Movement.

Key words: Xi Jinping’s thought on culture, cultural inheritance, keeping integrity and innovation