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Obama calls for diversity of cultures in world

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Visiting US President Barack Obama said Monday that different countries should learn from each other to diversify cultures in the world.

US President Barack Obama delivers a speech at a dialogue with Chinese youth at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum during his four-day state visit to China, Nov. 16, 2009.[Pei Xin/Xinhua]

"Each country in this interconnecting world has its own culture, its own history, and its own traditions," Obama said during a dialogue with Chinese students in the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum.

"It is very important for the United States not to assume what is good for us is automatically good for somebody else," he said when responding to a question raised by a Shanghai college student about how to promote cultural exchanges between different countries.

Obama said one of the US strengths is the country has a very diverse culture, and has people coming from all around the world. "There is no one definition of what America looks like," he added.

He cited his family as an example of diverse cultures, saying the family is like "the United Nations" as his father was from Kenya, his mother from Kansas of the US Midwest, while his sister was a half-Indonesian married to "a Chinese person from Canada."

Obama flew into Shanghai from Singapore on Sunday night to kick off his four-day visit to China, his first trip to the Asian country since taking office in January.

Later Monday, he will fly to Beijing, where he will hold talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao and meet with other Chinese leaders.

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