Beijing Hosts 2025 Belt and Road Seminar on Creativity and Sustainable Development
RE International Center for Digital Creativity.” This unique space serves as a digital museum showcasing the cultural heritage of the Shougang site, reimagined through technology. Utilizing holography, advanced sound technologies, and extended reality (XR), this digital venue transforms past industrial relics into captivating exhibits that bridge history and modernity. Notable exhibitions, such as the “Infinite Iron City” and “Return to the Old Summer Palace,” offered a visual journey that left officials mesmerized.
Rumbidzai Mwalilino, a representative from Malawi, commended the Park's ability to blend technology with cultural preservation. She remarked on how the site recreates historical experiences through virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI), fostering a deeper appreciation for cultural heritage among younger generations. This approach, she believes, enhances engagement with cultural narratives, ensuring they are kept alive in the digital age.
In addition to historical explorations, officials participated in the immersive “Huanju - Multiverse Immersive Sci-Fi Exhibition.” This engaging experience showcased a fusion of technology and culture, presenting seven interactive sci-fi environments that captivated attendees, leading them into an imaginative universe ranging from “Dinosaur Crisis” to “Star Trek.” The exhibition highlighted the booming sci-fi industry, demonstrating how technological advancements like VR and augmented reality (AR) are reshaping cultural interactions.
Koroma Mark Thaimu from Sierra Leone noted the importance of preserving unique cultures while embracing digital transformation. He emphasized the need for integrating local heritage into technological innovation to sustain and revitalize cultural legacies. He expressed an intention to bring insights from China's unique blend of culture and technology back to Africa, aiming to harness these innovative tools to enhance cultural preservation efforts.
The seminar focused on crucial subjects such as creative design, technological innovation, urban renewal, and green transformation. Through specialized lectures, case studies, and immersive field experiences, it provided an essential platform for sharing China’s wealth of knowledge in creativity and sustainable development with officials from Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries and beyond. This initiative is designed to foster cross-cultural understanding and stimulate collaboration geared toward realizing the SDGs on a global scale, offering insights adaptable to individual national contexts.