Cultural forum releases consensus to promote world peace

The third annual Taihu World Cultural Forum, which ended in Shanghai on Thursday, unveiled its Shanghai Consensus detailing the forum's aim to boost soft power interactions.

The Shanghai Consensus emphasized the need for mutual learning through cultural interaction, saying, "Increasing cultural soft power is essential to achieve world peace and global development."

This year's gathering explored the theme of "strengthening cultural soft power interaction, promoting world peace and development".

During the forum, nearly 500 participants representing 20 countries and regions discussed a variety of topics, including "strengthening cultural soft power interaction as a new basis for China-US relations" and "accelerating the innovation of the creative industry to enhance cultural soft power."

The forum described the current state of global insecurities, stating, "There are regions in the world that are experiencing extreme political and economic turbulence. Facing such uncertain situations, citizens of the world have an even stronger desire to seek peace and development."

The Shanghai Consensus proposed "increasing cultural soft power interaction", which it predicted would "promote mutual understanding among people of different nationalities and in turn spur global political and economic cooperation".

Wei Tian contributed to this story.