I would like to thank you, Mr. President for your kind invitation and the University for its warm reception. It is my great honor to come here to attend the grand centennial anniversary celebration of your university. On behalf of all the guests from universities across the world, and also in my own name, I wish to extend our warmest congratulations to the President and faculty and students and wish your university become more prosperous day by day.
In the 11th century, a university came into the world as a result of the development of human civilization. Ten centuries later, we gather here in your university, to keep on pondering over our life and exploring the endless knowledge.
Our universities form. a great intellectual community around the world. Science has no nationality, knowledge belongs to everyone. Our universities create new knowledge. They teach this knowledge, together with that of other universities and also the best of the great storehouse of knowledge, which those who came before us have uncovered, tested and accumulated.
All universities contribute to the prosperity and success of their country. They also conserve the culture and inheritance specific to their country's civilization. But they do more. Knowledge is secure only when it is hard won by the independent tests of accuracy, rational explanation and truth. So, when we teach our students skills, we also give them values. On the one side, these are values for personal and civic conduct. On the other side, these values underscore the personal need for independent understanding which is the source of human creativity.
These duties give universities a high responsibility. They are rooted in a great and fine tradition of honesty, free and fearless inquiry and independence. Each university is a beacon of light in its own society and, by its association with its sisters, its knowledge and its values are widely spread.
Over the past 100 years, your University is grounded in its educational philosophy of 'extensive scholarship with unyielding dedication and earnest inquiry with independent examination', and has shaped an academic ideology of extracting the best and exploiting the greatest. As a result, the University has turned out, class upon class, graduates with brilliant scholarship and lofty aspiration, many of whom have become great leaders in China.
A tradition is not built easily or quickly. During 100 years, your University has been fashioning your tradition. Present and future members of your university! We hope to see you elaborate and consolidate your tradition. We hope to see you become a keystone of the intellectual community. In your next century, we hope to see you contribute to the international academic movement as a whole, as more and more of your members come to participate in the activities of your sister universities.
Currently, China is in a period of social transition marked with astonishing progress and change. The profundity and significance of this transition is unprecedented. A university is so termed, because it serves not only as a propeller of economic and social progress, but also a ferry and bridge for academic transmission and a cradle of thoughts. As a prestigious university with a century-long academic tradition and intellectual esteem, your University is destined to shoulder weighty responsibilities on its long journey ahead.
And again I would like to express my genuine congratulations and best wishes! May our friendship flourish with the days!