The latest issue of China's Ethnic Groups was about to come off the press when
    I returned from the 2003 International Congresses of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Florence, Italy. In five years from now, Kunming, the capital city of the multi-ethnicity Yunnan Province in southwest China, will have the honor of playing host to the next ICAES. On request of the magazine's editorial board, I would like to assure our colleagues the world over that we'll commit ourselves to making the Kunming congress the best-ever in the history of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. In my opinion, Kunming's success at the Florence Congress in winning the 2008 ICAES highlights the trust and support given us by the global anthropologist and ethnologist community. For that, I would like to take this opportunity to once again extend our heartfelt thanks to them.
    My happiness and pride were gone the moment the success was announced at the Florence Congress, replaced by a keen awareness of the pressing need for us to score fresh achievements in our research in order to better qualify as host of the 2008 ICAES. Since then, I have been thinking of what should be done to launch more research projects and how to set up a Chinese federation of anthropology and ethnology societies so that resources in this field of study can be effectively pooled for the most satisfactory results. Only in this way will it be possible for us Chinese anthropologists and ethnologists to truly play host to the Kunming congress.
    As the country is growing in strength, it may not be very difficult for us to host, five years later, a successful ICAES in so far as the material aspect of our commitment is concerned -- providing the best services to the participants, cutting their expenses for participation, etc. Let me repeat: we are fully confident in making the Kunming congress something unprecedented, the best of its kind. Meanwhile, we refuse to limit ourselves to realizing such promises. We believe that for success, a congress of a global caliber depends on the subjects to be discussed in the course of it and on how deep-going the expected information sharing will be. As we see it, only in this way will the Kunming congress exert a far-reaching influence on development of anthropologist and ethnologist studies worldwide.
    We mean what we say. Over the next five years, we'll spare no effort to bring about a contingent of anthropologists and ethnologists younger in age and professionally competent. We'll try, as far as possible, to enhance our academic exchanges with our colleagues outside China. We'll improve our research in those frontier fields related to the four branches of anthropology. We won't forget that we have an even more important mission to fulfill through our research, that is, promoting the cultural communications between China's 56 ethnic groups, the protection of cultural diversity and the mutual respect between different cultures.
    Our effort to ensure success of the Kunming Congress, it seems, will yield a result far more valuable and important than what the congress itself will. I mean China will become an even more powerful booster to the development of anthropology and ethnology. Once a science is adequately developed in a country with a population accounting for one fifth of the human race, that science is bound to receive a most powerful impetus in its worldwide development in all its aspects.
    That's my most optimistic expectation of the 2008 Kunming ICAES. I'll do my best to make it true.