Youth, Technology, and Cultural Exchange in China-ASEAN Cooperation

This article is adapted from speeches delivered by Molika Veng, Program Manager at the Youth House for Cambodia-China Friendship. Speaking from the perspective of young people engaged in Cambodia-China exchanges, she discussed how technology, education, and popular culture can help strengthen cultural understanding and people-to-people connectivity between China and ASEAN countries.

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I come from the Youth House for Cambodia-China Friendship, which focuses on strengthening connections between Cambodian and Chinese youth through cultural exchange, technology cooperation, and educational engagement. I am also here to share some of the ideas and visions that my team and I have been discussing regarding future collaboration between China and ASEAN countries.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who is in China to attend the 2026 World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance, arrives in Shanghai, east China, July 16, 2026. (Source: Xinhua)

First of all, it would be technology—virtual reality technologies that can create immersive experiences. Later, I will say more details that we don’t have now, but youth can spend time actually experiencing what it was like back then: why ancestors acted that way, made their decisions, worshipped in certain religions, and how that shaped the people we are now.

And it would be even nicer if users could also cocreate the experience while on the platform—reimagining the art, the products that come from these cultural heritage elements, and other details like intangible heritage, music, and so on. And also, as the previous speaker said, the design—the younger generation can cocreate.

The second one is also on the topic of technology, but about the experience itself—like exchange programs in universities, joint research, which can allow students from all countries in China and ASEAN to visit actual sites, converse with local people, try the local food there, and be taken off the screen. That would be very nice.

The third one is actually interesting: cultural heritage is also pop culture. Like me, I also like to watch Chinese dramas and see what it looked like back then—what they dressed, what they ate. And I believe there are other users around the world who are ready to engage in this kind of experience.

But we can see in other countries, like Korea, they actually use models and celebrities to share what they eat, their experiences, their clothes, right? I believe China has the same potential.

What’s crucial is that we, as Asian member states, can together act as exporters of our culture. We can also share what we eat, share what we think about globalization, civilization, and cultural heritage, share how we dress—so we must both access and export, to make it a fully twoway cultural exchange.

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