Peking University, Oct. 24: Invited by the Beijing Forum academic board, Harvard University Professor Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel Economics Prize winner, agreed to be the consultant of the Beijing Forum academic board and accepted an interview during his visit to Peking University on Oct. 15.

Prof. Amartya Sen first expressed his opinions on the theme of Beijing Forum this year “The Harmony of Civilizations and Prosperity for All – Tradition and Modernity, Transition and Transformation”. He spoke highly of Beijing Forum taking “tradition and modernity” into the theme this year and regarded how to deal with the relationship between tradition and modernity as an important problem faced by the whole world, which China, India and other countries all need to pay attention to. In his opinion, on the one hand, we need traditions to support our targets and ideals passed from our ancestors thousands of years ago, and on the other hand, we also need modernity as tools to realize those targets and ideals. Therefore, he emphasized the importance of keeping the balance between tradition and modernity and pointed out that we should be careful not to worship traditions blindly and neglect the modernity or only advocate modernization and oppose the traditions.

In the end, Amartya Sen expressed his blessing for Beijing Forum 2011, wishing Beijing Forum could keeping developing and progressing, and hoped he could take part in Beijing Forum again in the future.

In 2006, Prof. Amartya Sen was invited to take part in Beijing Forum and delivered a speech “Our Global Civilization” during the opening ceremony.

Written by: Xu Xinyi
Edited by: Cao Yixing
Source: PKU News (Chinese)