Below is the complete text of Chinese President Jiang Zemin's address on Saturday in Sanders Theatre, as transcribed by The Crimson. The bracketed portions represent parts of the prepared text of Jiang's speech which were not delivered or were inaudible, or minor stylistic changes.

Building Trust, Cooperation

[In translation]

Mr. President,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I wish to thank Dr. Neil [L.] Rudenstine, president of Harvard University, for inviting me to this ancient yet modernized institution of the United States in this golden fall.

Since its founding some 360 years ago, Harvard has nurtured a great number of outstanding [government leaders], scientists, writers and [business leaders], including six of the American presidents and over 30 Nobel Prize winners. The fact that Harvard was founded before the United States of America testifies to its position in American history.

Harvard is among the first American universities to accept Chinese students. The Chinese educational, scientific and cultural communities have all along maintained academic exchanges with this university. Harvard has thus made useful contribution to the enhanced mutual understanding between the Chinese and American peoples.

Mutual understanding is the basis for state-to-state relations. Without it, it would be impossible for countries to build trust and promote cooperation with each other. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and the United States, the exchanges and mutual understanding between our two peoples have broadened and deepened steadily. However, this is not enough. To promote the development of China-U.S. relations, China needs to know the United States better, and vice versa.

To know China better, one may approach it from different angles. China today has been evolved from its past. China is a country with 5,000 years of civilization. Therefore, it is important to approach China from a historical and cultural perspective.

A 5,000-Year Civilization

I recall my first lessons on calculus in senior high school. My teacher quoted a line from Zhuang Zi, Chinese philosopher over 2,000 years ago, which reads, "Cut away half of a rod and keep on halving what is left, and there will be no end to that process." This gave me a vivid concept of limit. It shows that the ancient Chinese realized the endless process of changes of matters and had a fairly good understanding of the nature. As early as in 2,500 B.C., Chinese began astronomical observation and geographical survey, and gradually formed a world outlook of an "integration of the universe and humanity." China produced in its long history many outstanding philosophers, thinkers, [government leaders], strategists, scientists, writers and artists, and left us numerous volumes of literature. The scene of "contention of a hundred schools of thought" brought forth the Spring and Autumn Period 2,500 years ago and the Warring States Period over 2,200 years ago and the emergence of various schools of thought and their exponents, such as Lao-tzu and Confucius, about 2,400 years ago. All occupy a very important position in the world history of philosophy.

Ancient China made unique contributions to many areas of science, including astronomy, calendric system, geography, mathematics, agriculture, medicine and the humanities. Records of solar and lunar eclipses are found in the inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty over 3,000 years ago. In the 2,100 years from the Qin Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty (that is, from 221 B.C. to 1911), the 27 appearances of Halley's Comet were all recorded in China. Zhang Heng, of the Han Dynasty, invented a seismograph to determine the location of earthquakes, and the celestial globe that showed the movement of the sun, moon and other stars. Mathematicians in the pre-Qin days put forward the proposition known as the Pythagorean theorem in the West today. In the Northern and Southern Dynasties in the 4th century A.D., China's mathematician Zu Chongzhi calculated the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter to be 3.1415926. China's silk-weaving, porcelain-making, metallurgy and ship-building reached the world's best level in ancient times. In the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Zaiyu initiated the 12-tone temperament, which later became the universal standard tones. Chinese medicine is a unique school of its own. China's four great inventions of paper-making, gun-powder, printing and [the] compass [...] changed the face of the world. These inventions and creations of China have brought forward the rationalistic brilliance of coordination between humanity and [...] nature, and the integration of scientific spirit with moral ideals.

Chinese culture in history has never stopped developing. It has enriched itself through the contention and infiltration of various disciplines and schools of thought, and also through the mutual exchanges and learning between China and other countries in the world. Since old times, the Chinese people came to know full well the importance of "drawing widely upon others' strong points to improve oneself." The Han and Tang dynasties were both an age of economic prosperity and also one of flourishing international exchanges. Imperial envoy Zhang Qian's trip to the "West" in the Han Dynasty, over 2,000 years ago, opened up the world-famous Silk Road; Eminent Monk Xuan Zang, of the Tang Dynasty, brought back ancient culture after braving the long journey to South Asian countries. In the Ming Dynasty, Chinese navigator Cheng Ho led a fleet to what the people then called the "West Sea" seven times in the 15th century, spreading the Chinese culture to distant land. Only later on, especially in the late Qing Dynasty, [did] the feudal rulers adopt [...] a policy of seclusion, which hampered China's progress and its exchanges with the outside world. After the Opium War, generation after generation of enlightened Chinese people have spared no efforts in learning from Western countries advanced science and cultural achievements in combination with China's realities and pushing for China's social reforms and development. Today, the Chinese people who are struggling to achieve modernization have made the opening-up a basic state policy and conducted extensive exchanges and cooperation with the rest of the world, thus creating a brand-new situation in its opening-up endeavor in the Chinese history.

Unique Cultural Heritage