Liu Tongfang: Giving Full Play to the Important Role of Culture in Building a Shared Spiritual Home for the Chinese Nation
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in his 2026 New Year Address: "We nourish our spiritual home through culture." This important discourse manifests the value goals of Marxism and the rich wisdom of Chinese civilization. It contains the profound philosophy that "a country prospers when its culture prospers, and a nation is strong when its culture is strong," providing a highly condensed summary of the great achievements of our country’s cultural construction since the New Era while clarifying the practical requirements for further promoting the prosperity and development of socialist culture with Chinese characteristics in the New Era. Deeply grasping the internal connection between nourishing the spiritual home with culture and achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation—and promoting cultural prosperity and revitalization from a new starting point—holds significant theoretical value and practical meaning for successfully carrying out various tasks in the field of cultural construction during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period [1], better shouldering the new cultural mission of the New Era, and solidly advancing the building of a culturally strong country.
Nourishing the spiritual home with culture to build a solid spiritual foundation for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation
Culture concerns the foundation and destiny of a country; the realization of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation inevitably requires the prosperity and revitalization of Chinese culture. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out the need to "build a shared spiritual home for the Chinese nation." A spiritual home is a psycho-cultural system composed of elements such as cultural experience, psychological states, and value concepts. It is a concentrated reflection of a country's value orientation and a nation's spiritual character, as well as an important carrier for an individual's spiritual belonging. Nourishing the spiritual home through culture and drawing nutrients from it for national prosperity, national rejuvenation, and people's happiness is an inevitable requirement for achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
Culture maintains national political identity and stable operation, laying the spiritual foundation for building a great modern socialist country. As an important spiritual bond that coheres social members and maintains national identity, culture strengthens the overall strength of the state by constructing political identity and providing a value basis, thereby laying a solid foundation for building a great modern socialist country. Culture can enhance national identity. National identity built with culture as its core is the bedrock upon which people develop a sense of belonging to the country, as well as an important source of a country's centripetal force and cohesion. The abstract concept of the state needs to be transformed into concrete and perceptible objects of identity through a series of symbolic signs, cultural activities, ceremonies, and historical education. For example, ritual experiences such as raising the national flag and playing the national anthem help clarify the identity belonging of Chinese people through cultural forms and strengthen individual national identity. Culture establishes the core value system for national operations. By providing individuals with basic norms of behavior and concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, culture helps maintain national stability and promote development. Both the ethical morality of "loyalty" (zhong) and "filial piety" (xiao) lauded in traditional Chinese society and the Core Socialist Values advocated in the New Era subtley shape people's value concepts through cultural carriers such as books, films, traditional opera, and music, forming a broad value consensus. As national soft power, culture is an important component of comprehensive national strength. As the changes unseen in a century [2] accelerate, competition between countries has transcended simple comparisons of economic and military strength; it is also manifested in deep-level contests of cultural strength. The power of cultural attraction and appeal has increasingly become an essential part of a country’s comprehensive national strength.
Culture endows a nation with a unique soul and vivid lifeblood, providing spiritual momentum for the sustainable development of the Chinese nation. By shaping common identity markers and forming a spiritual core, culture injects a unique spiritual temperament into a nation, granting it soul, emotion, and vitality. Chinese culture has shaped the unique spiritual personality of the Chinese nation and provided it with distinct identity markers. The State of Qin "unified the script, standardized the track width of carriages, unified weights and measures, and standardized social ethics" (shu tong wen, che tong gui, liang tong heng, xing tong lun) [3], initiating the historical process of development for China as a unified multi-ethnic state. Common language and script, myths and legends, and historical allusions have nurtured the unique customs, thinking patterns, value orientations, and behavioral norms of the Chinese nation. For example, customs such as honoring ancestors during the Qingming Festival and admiring the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival, as well as allusions like "sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall" (wo xin chang dan) [4] or "serving the country with total loyalty" (jing zhong bao guo) [5], constitute the collective cultural memory of the Chinese nation, adding bricks and mortar to the construction of a shared spiritual home for the Chinese nation. Culture provides a powerful spiritual core for the sustainable development of the Chinese nation. The wisdom of survival and artistic creations accumulated by the sons and daughters of China throughout their long history have, through long-term cultural inheritance, strengthened the historical depth and continuity of Chinese civilization. This has endowed the Chinese nation with a powerful spiritual core and internal resilience. This is the solid support that allowed the Chinese nation to move from profound crisis toward great rejuvenation, remaining passed down like a flame through vicissitudes and standing tall among the nations of the world. The creative transformation and innovative development of fine traditional Chinese culture in the New Era allow the cultural lifeblood of the shared spiritual home of the Chinese nation to flow eternally, enabling it to constantly radiate vitality and provide continuous creative energy for the Chinese nation to scale new heights amidst the changes of the era.
Culture responds to the ultimate questions regarding the meaning and value of life, anchoring a spiritual destination for individuals to establish themselves and find peace of mind. Through edification, aesthetic enjoyment, and the bestowing of meaning, culture enables individuals to create and enrich their own spiritual worlds. Culture is the core mechanism for individual socialization and value formation. Individuals perceive and understand the world by learning language, distinguish good from evil by learning historical allusions, cultivate their temperament by learning poetry and song, and enhance cultural identity by participating in festivals and ceremonies... culture subtly shapes an individual’s way of thinking, emotional patterns, value concepts, and behavioral norms, enabling the individual to smoothly integrate into society and establish their own value coordinates. Culture provides individuals with aesthetic enjoyment and spiritual space. Artistic forms such as the "four arts" (zither, go, calligraphy, and painting), and mental exercises such as the "investigation of things" (ge wu zhi zhi) [6] or logical reasoning, help improve an individual’s spiritual cultivation and realm, opening up an independent and vast spiritual world that makes the spiritual home rich and complete. When facing life tests such as setbacks and difficulties, the interpretation of meaning and spiritual encouragement provided by culture become important supports for individuals to settle their bodies and minds and clarify the value of life. For example, the spirit of struggle in "As Heaven’s movement is ever vigorous, so must a gentleman ceaselessly strive to strengthen himself" [7] inspires individuals to forge ahead and work hard; the wisdom of "the Way follows nature" (dao fa zi ran) inspires individuals to act according to circumstances and follow nature; and the concept of "compassion as the foundation" guides individuals to maintain kind thoughts and care for all living beings. Throughout history, generations of Chinese people have relied on rich Chinese cultural resources to nurture their character, establish their lives, and enlighten their wisdom. It is precisely because millions of individuals nourish their spiritual homes through culture that they have collectively laid the cultural foundation for the enduring spirit of the Chinese nation and the prosperity of the country.
Nourishing the spiritual home with the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era demonstrates great practical power
Since the New Era, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core—based on a profound grasp of the accelerated evolution of the "two overall situations" [8] and the strategic requirements of Chinese-path modernization—has always upheld the guiding position of Marxism in the ideological field. Rooted in the profound and extensive Chinese civilization and conforming to the trends of information technology development, it has used the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era to nourish the spiritual home, producing a series of fruitful practical results and opening a new chapter in socialist cultural construction.
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "We must persist in the Sinicization and modernization of Marxism, inherit and develop fine traditional Chinese culture, promote the localization of foreign cultures, and constantly cultivate and create socialist culture with Chinese characteristics in the New Era." Under the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Culture, the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era adheres to the fundamental stance of being people-centered and follows the development direction of socialist culture with Chinese characteristics. It holds fast to the "soul-vein" of Marxism and the "root-vein" of fine traditional Chinese culture. By upholding the fundamentals and breaking new ground, it possesses powerful ideological leadership, spiritual cohesion, value appeal, and international influence. Among these, ideological leadership is manifested in guiding practice with scientific theory to ensure that the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era advances in the correct direction; spiritual cohesion is manifested in enhancing the cohesion and centripetal force of the Chinese nation and building a shared spiritual home for the Chinese nation; value appeal is manifested in cultivating and practicing the Core Socialist Values, so that all people are of one heart and one mind, uniting in struggle; and international influence is manifested in enhancing the communication and influence of Chinese civilization and increasing our country's right to speak. The culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era nourishes the people’s spiritual home, meets the people's cultural needs, strengthens the people's spiritual power, and fosters a spiritual temperament of openness, inclusiveness, confidence, and self-reliance, injecting powerful spiritual momentum into the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era. Under the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Culture, the Chinese people have jointly painted a vivid practical picture of nourishing the spiritual home with the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era.
By prospering the cause of literature and art and launching more high-quality masterpieces, the value foundation of the spiritual home is solidified. An important carrier for nourishing the spiritual home with the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era is excellent literary and artistic works. The Core Socialist Values are the concentrated expression of the contemporary Chinese spirit and the ideological and moral foundation for coalescing China's strength. Using excellent literary and artistic works that the people enjoy to promote Core Socialist Values—allowing them to be continuously internalized as the value consensus of all people—plays an important role in building the shared spiritual home of the Chinese nation. For example, a series of high-quality masterpieces such as the TV drama Minning Town (山海情), the movie I Am the High Mountain (我本是高山), and the radio drama China’s BeiDou (中国北斗) showcase the style of the times and depict the scroll of rejuvenation. These works reflect the self-confident and self-reliant spiritual outlook of the Chinese people and enhance the emotional identity of the Chinese nation, becoming an important source for nourishing the spiritual home. Upholding the cultural subjectivity of the Chinese nation in literary and artistic creation and scaling the heights of literature and art with firm cultural confidence can effectively enhance the cohesion and appeal of Core Socialist Values, fundamentally solidifying the value foundation of the spiritual home.
By improving the quality and efficiency of cultural services to meet the people's expectations for a better life, the breadth of the spiritual home’s coverage is expanded. Improving the quality/efficiency and promoting the universal benefit/sharing of cultural services are key paths for continuously expanding the coverage of the spiritual home and promoting the common prosperity of the people's spiritual life. Through innovatively implementing cultural projects for the benefit of the people, promoting the standardization and equalization of basic public cultural services, basically completing a six-level public cultural service system covering urban and rural areas, and constructing high-quality cultural life circles according to local conditions, we have opened up the "last mile" of cultural services and effectively protected the people's basic cultural rights. With the help of the Internet and digital technology, we have broken the spatial and temporal limitations of traditional cultural services, drawing more people into psychological and cultural activities through interactive and immersive experiences, thus extending the boundaries of the spiritual home into virtual space. By giving full play to the subjective role of the people in cultural construction and encouraging social forces to participate in public cultural services, we have achieved a transition from "passive acceptance" to "active creation" of public cultural services and products, promoting the joint construction and sharing of culture. Inclusive and shared cultural services of high quality have effectively enhanced the cultural well-being of the people, forming a vast spiritual home that provides abundant nourishment.
By deeply empowering high-quality economic development through cultural innovation, the material foundation of the spiritual home is consolidated. Culture and the economy influence and interact with each other. Deeply empowering high-quality economic development through culture can solidify the indispensable material foundation for nourishing the spiritual home. By deeply tapping into the economic value of culture, taking cultural innovation as the drive engine for developing new quality productive forces, and promoting the deep integration of cultural resources and creative elements with the entire industrial chain, we can stimulate the vigorous development of new business formats such as digital culture, creative design, and the integration of culture and tourism, creating emerging cultural industrial clusters. In 2025, enterprises above the designated size in the national cultural and related industries achieved an operating income of 15.2135 trillion yuan, an increase of 1.0451 trillion yuan over the previous year, a growth of 7.4%. Using cultural innovation to boost the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries and enhancing the cultural added-value and market competitiveness of sectors such as manufacturing, agriculture, and tourism helps optimize the economic structure and provides continuous momentum for high-quality economic development. Relying on market mechanisms to create a diverse range of high-quality cultural products and services can better meet the people’s growing multi-dimensional spiritual and cultural needs, activating the potential of internal demand through cultural consumption and feeding back into the construction of the spiritual home. In the process of culture deeply empowering economic development, cultural resources are continuously transformed into economic value, forming a positive pattern where culture and economy merge and promote each other. This explores a new paradigm for the coordinated development of material and spiritual civilization, laying a solid material foundation for the spiritual home.
Promoting cultural prosperity and revitalization from a new starting point injects even more powerful spiritual strength into building a strong country and national rejuvenation. Cultural prosperity and revitalization are important hallmarks of Chinese-path modernization and a prerequisite for achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The "15th Five-Year Plan" period is a key period for laying the foundation and taking comprehensive action toward basically realizing socialist modernization. At this new historical starting point, we must unswervingly use Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era to congeal the soul and forge the spirit. Guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Culture, we must continuously promote the prosperity and development of socialist culture with Chinese characteristics in the New Era, continue to nourish the spiritual home, and inject even more powerful spiritual strength into the building of a strong country and national rejuvenation.
Continuously cultivate and practice the core socialist values to solidify the cornerstone of the spiritual home. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: “As long as we continuously cultivate and practice the core socialist values, and consistently inherit and carry forward the fine traditional Chinese culture, we will certainly be able to build a spiritual home for the people of all ethnic groups across the country, and solidify the ideological foundation for the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation to unite, strive, and forge ahead [9].” Universal identification with and practical implementation of core socialist values are key to coalescing China's strength and constructing the spiritual home; they can solidify the ideological foundation of the shared spiritual home of the Chinese nation. We must persist in the guiding role of Marxism in the ideological sphere, improve the fundamental systems for such guidance, strengthen "position consciousness" [10], and continuously enhance the Party's comprehensive leadership over ideological construction. This will increase the cohesion and leading power of socialist ideology, continuously build Chinese spirit, Chinese values, and Chinese strength, and develop and expand mainstream values, mainstream public opinion, and mainstream culture.
With a focus on cultivating "new people of the era" [11] who are capable of shoulder the heavy responsibility of national rejuvenation, we must strengthen the promotion of advanced models and touching stories of practicing core socialist values across all industries and fields. We should fully leverage the leading role of core socialist values in national education, the creation of spiritual civilization, and the creation, production, and dissemination of spiritual and cultural products. Integrating core socialist values into all aspects of social development will continuously improve the people's ideological awareness, moral standards, and refined civility. By strengthening educational guidance, practical cultivation, and institutional guarantees, while utilizing rule-of-law methods to "wash away the turbid and promote the clear" (jī zhuó yáng qīng) and "uphold the righteous and expel the evil" (fǔ zhèng qù xié) [12], we can lead the entire people to consciously practice core socialist values, gradually internalizing them as emotional identifications and behavioral habits.
Continuously promote the "second integration" to carry forward the root and pulse of the spiritual home. The shared spiritual home of the Chinese nation was formed on the profound foundation of over five thousand years of Chinese civilization, and its root and pulse lie in fine traditional Chinese culture. The "second integration" [13] profoundly reveals the high degree of compatibility between Marxism and fine traditional Chinese culture, pointing out the fundamental path for the prosperity and development of New Era socialism with Chinese characteristics and the continuation of the root and pulse of the shared spiritual home. We must properly handle the relationship between the "soul-pulse" (húnmài) of Marxism and the "root-pulse" (gēnmài) of fine traditional Chinese culture. This involves using the light of Marxist truth to activate the contemporary vitality of fine traditional Chinese culture, stimulating its epochal value and practical functions, while also continuously consolidating the cultural subjectivity of the Chinese nation. By using fine traditional Chinese culture to provide rich cultural nourishment and historical depth for the Sinicization and modernization of Marxism, we ensure that Marxism exhibits Chinese characteristics, Chinese style, and Chinese demeanor. We must also manage the relationship between upholding the fundamentals and breaking new ground, ensuring we adhere to the "orthodoxy" of the socialist path, theory, system, and culture to guarantee the correct direction of cultural construction, while simultaneously promoting cultural innovation to fully stimulate the innovative and creative vitality of the entire nation, advancing the creative transformation and innovative development of fine traditional Chinese culture.
Vigorously develop cultural undertakings and cultural industries to enrich the connotations of the spiritual home. Developing cultural undertakings and industries is an important method and means of nourishing the spiritual home, and it is an inevitable requirement for meeting the people's spiritual and cultural needs in the New Era and guaranteeing their cultural rights and interests. We must properly grasp the relationship between ideological attributes and industrial attributes, and between social benefits and economic benefits, adhering to the forward direction of advanced socialist culture and putting social benefits first. Staying firm in the people's standpoint and focusing on better meeting the people's growing needs for a better life, we should implement actions to improve the quality and efficiency of public cultural services. We must strive to optimize the supply of public cultural services so that the people can enjoy a more substantial, diverse, and higher-quality spiritual and cultural life. By adhering to a people-centered creative orientation, we will enhance original cultural capacity and promote the creation of high-quality works in news and publishing, radio, film, television, literature, and art. Regarding the production of excellent works as the central link of literary and artistic work, we should launch works that resonate deeply with the people and are worthy of the era. We must use cultural creativity, technological innovation, and industrial integration to cultivate new growth drivers, continuously improving the cultural industry system and the cultural market system to promote the high-quality development of the cultural industry. This will make the cultural industry a new highlight for stimulating domestic demand, promoting employment, activating the market, and boosting confidence. We should proactively seize the opportunities of information technology development, promote the deep integration of culture and technology, and empower the high-quality development of cultural undertakings and industries through digitalization, performing the modernization, popularization, and international dissemination of cultural classics and heritage. Taking the deep integration of culture and tourism as the main thread, we should accelerate the construction of a strong tourism nation, enrich the supply of high-quality tourism products, and improve service quality, allowing tourism to better serve a better life, promote economic development, and nourish the spiritual home.
Promote cultural exchange and mutual learning to expand the scope of the spiritual home. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "We must deepen exchange and mutual learning, constructing a spiritual home of harmony without uniformity with an inclusive heart, and treating diverse cultures with an attitude of appreciation, mutual study, and mutual learning [14]." Only by promoting cultural exchange and mutual learning—absorbing everything and drawing on the strengths of others—can we form an open and inclusive cultural pattern and atmosphere, building a confident and open spiritual home. Adhering to the principles of "not forgetting the origin, absorbing the foreign, and facing the future," we must both strengthen cultural confidence—with high identification with fine traditional Chinese culture, revolutionary culture, and advanced socialist culture, and a clear-cut opposition to cultural nihilism and historical nihilism—and seek wisdom and nourishment from different civilizations with an attitude of equality, respect, and inclusion, learning from all the outstanding evolutionary achievements of human society to provide continuous nourishment for creating new glories for Chinese culture. We must strengthen international communication capacity building and construct a strategic communication system with distinct Chinese characteristics, continuously improving international communication influence, the appeal of Chinese culture, the approachability of China's image, the persuasiveness of Chinese discourse, and the ability to guide international public opinion. We should accelerate the construction of a Chinese discourse and narrative system, using Chinese theory to explain Chinese practice and Chinese practice to sublimate Chinese theory. By creating new concepts, categories, and expressions that connect China and the world, we can more fully and vividly showcase Chinese stories and the ideological and spiritual power behind them. This will allow Chinese wisdom, Chinese solutions, and Chinese experience to reach people’s hearts, ensuring the international community becomes more familiar with and recognizes a credible, lovable, and respectable image of China.
(The author is a professor at the School of Marxism, Zhejiang University) Source: People’s Daily (March 3, 2026) Editor: Huihui