China president says Singapore’s Sentosa is in the same league as Greece’s Acropolis and Egypt’s Luxor Temple

Beijing, China – Chinese President Xi Jinping, speaking at the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations (CDAC), placed Singapore’s Sentosa alongside World Heritage sites like the Luxor Temple in Egypt and The Acropolis of Greece.

Delivering his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the CDAC on May 15 (Wednesday), President Xi Jinping, on his topic of visiting many civilisations in the world rich in culture, name-dropped Singapore’s Sentosa in the same list as “the central Asian city of Samarkand, the Luxor Temple in Egypt” and “Wat Phra Kaew in Thailand and the Acropolis of Athens in Greece.”

The comment made the online community question the “worthiness” of Sentosa to have made it to the list.

Member of the public Wyatt Seet commented comparing two landmarks while Chris Low gave a rather lengthy satirical description of Sentosa’s history.

Another netizen wondered if Sentosa could now be applied to become a UNESCO world heritage site.

For those wondering, there are ten criteria to fulfill in order to become part of the UNESCO World Heritage List, some of which include:

– to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius

– to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared

– to contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance

President Xi Jinping called on a consolidation of “cultural foundation” by building a community with a shared future, reported XinhuaNet. “Exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations should be conducted in a reciprocal and equal manner, and be diversified and multi-directional,” said the Chinese president.

He noted that the world would be “dull” if human civilisations were “reduced to only one single colour, or one single model.” Instead, President Xi called for “mutual respect based on equality…to promote interaction, dialogue, and harmony among civilisations.”

President Xi said that China would “surely embrace the world with a more open posture and contribute more dynamic civilization achievements to the world in the future.”