Comment on "300-year-old legend sets an example"(China Daily, April 9)

Improved relations between cultures are always a positive goal. It breeds understanding, tolerance, compassion and most importantly, acceptance.

Building strong, productive relationships requires skillful, superior communication, and communication is not a one-way street.

The developed world needs to realign their thinking, cast off long-time prejudices, and do more to acknowledge an emerging China on the world stage.

China, too, has an integral role to play in this process. Both sides have significant and potentially influential roles.

Relationship building of the kind envisaged is more likely to succeed from the bottom up than from the top down.

Fred Jansohn, on China Daily website

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(China Daily 04/18/2012 page9)