China provides a contrast to both keynotes.
But cultural development is not something that can bring immediate success. Rather, it has to be accumulated bit by bit. We must open our hearts with tolerance and respect, so that our diverse ethnic groups and different regional cultures may communicate with one other, and so that Taiwan's local cultures connect with the cultures of Chinese-speaking communities and other world cultures, and create a new milieu of a cultural Taiwan in a modern century. In this sense, Chen's inauguration was itself a nationalist ritual for a new Taiwanese identity. However, the ceremony lacked a nationalist essence, restrained as it was by the precipitous dangers of cross-strait relations and the complexity of domestic ethnic disputes.