More youths from Europe shall be encouraged to come to China and see what the country is and learn from it, Tiziana Lippiello, president of the Ca' Foscari University of Venice in Italy, said in an exclusive interview in Shanghai on Tuesday.

"I would suggest European students to come to China and Chinese students to visit Europe more often, and get to know each other better based on their personal experience rather than the the media only," said Lippiello on the sidelines of the 2nd World Conference on China Studies.

Describing today's China with generosity, commitment, and hard work, she said that the university has developed cultural relations with quite many Chinese institutions of higher institution.

"Bearing the tradition of Marco Polo, Venice has always been open to international communication from all over the world, especially from the East. We started to build relations with Chinese universities in the 1960s," said Lippiello, who was the first to translate The Analects of Confucius and The Doctrine of the Mean to modern Italian.

Lippiello, who first visited Beijing in 1984, noted that Italy and China share certain similarities in their cultures. They include the openness to people, and the value for family and friendship.

"We appreciate such similarities, but also differences. There is the famous Chinese saying he er bu tong, meaning finding harmony in diversity. Diversity is a value," she said.