1PrefaceForeword
LI Xuetao*

The Ninth Annual Meeting of the Society for Cultural Interaction in East
Asia was held at the Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) in May
2017, titled “A Global Perspective on the Past and Knowledge Transfer in
East Asia”.
Three scholars were invited to the meeting as keynote speakers. Professor
Alfons Labisch, former president of the University of Dusseldorf and memberof the Leopoldina, National Academy of Sciences in Germany, who made aspeech on “Eurasian Transfer of Knowledge vs. Eurasian Interchange ofKnowledge (The Times before Writing)”. He said that one-way “knowledgetransfer” we had talked about in the past was no longer applicable, and it
might be more fruitful if we conducted relevant research from the perspectiveof two-way “knowledge exchange” which involves the process of knowledge
input and output. An emeritus professor at the Kansai University, Akira
Matsuura 松浦章, explained the contribution of the four ancient Chinese
vessels to the oceanic trade of East Asia and Southeast Asia during the Qing
Dynasty (1644–1912) in his speech entitled “The history of the East AsianSea Exchange in the Qing Dynasty”. Professor Charles Willemen, member ofBelgian Royal Academy of Sciences and Rector of the International Buddhist
College in Thailand, made a speech titled “Buddhism Links More Than EastAsia”, elaborating on the internationalization of Chinese Buddhism. Nearly
200 scholars and students from more than 10 countries gave presentations in
36 sub-forums and held discussions on “A Global Perspective on the Past andKnowledge Transfer in East Asia”.
A global perspective of the past is a new perspective and method ofhistorical research and writing. It proposes to compile world history from amacro perspective or to inspect the micro-cases from a holistic approach
focused on inter-connection, or to treat some transnational historicalphenomena beyond the confines of the nation-state point of view. The	  * LI Xuetao 李雪涛 is director of Institute for Global History, Beijing Foreign Studies
University and President of the Society for Cultural Interaction in East Asia.

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Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 9 2018

research objectives, methodology, interdisciplinary features and digital meansof cultural interactions were reviewed from a global perspective in themeeting so as to establish a study of Cultural Interaction in East Asia,including the histories of all countries in this area, with a horizon beyond
national history, and understanding global change from the an interaction
centric point of view.
The significance of this meeting mainly embodies the application of thefollowing three aspects of the methodology. The first is a pan-culturalhorizon. It truly looks beyond the confines of nation-states to study historicalphenomena of cross-national, cross-regional, cross-cultural and crosslinguistic interaction. The second is a view of interaction which focuses on
the research of historic relationships in interactive networks, understanding
the history of East Asia and other countries in the world from the perspectiveof interaction, which means people in different regions, nationalities, andcultures interact with each other in the fields of economy, politics and culture
by contact throughout history. The third is the integrated use of interdisciplinary research methods- anthropology, sociology, economics, geography andeven a variety of natural science methods have been applied in the study ofcultural interaction in East Asia.
The Tenth Annual Meeting will be held at the City University of HongKong in 2018 which will focus on “Maritime East Asia – Network,Exchanges and Mobility”. The history of East Asian cultural development not
only has its own unique tradition, but also continuously innovates and experiences breakthroughs by the exchanges and interactions in East Asia andbetween East Asia and the world. It is through the study of cultural interaction in East Asia that we can truly understand that the civilizations of East
Asia today are the result of the exchanges and collisions with different
cultures and reveal the global significance of East Asian culture.