- Participants, organisers and students before going off for dinner
The Division International Studies successfully held its first international conference last week from 16-18 September. Scholars from China, Germany, Turkey, USA, Taiwan, Japan and India discussed China’s place in the world after 30 years of reform. In eight panels and one roundtable discussion the participants discussed various aspects ranging from China‘s foreign policy and standing in the world to its economic reforms and internal institutions. General agreement emerged on the progress China had made not only in bringing prosperity to its population and lifting large parts of the population out of poverty but also in reforming its institutions and governance. Yet, it also became clear that in many aspects challenges persist. The panel „Security in East Asia“ focussed on China’s relations to its Asian neighbours and present-day questions of China’s foreign policy: Beijing’s leadership potential in the international sphere, prospects for regional integration in East Asia, and China’s approach to UN peacekeeping.
The panel on “China and the global South” concentrated on the country’s growing engagement with the developing world, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa. Panellists highlighted the economic, political as well as normative impact China has had on different parts of Africa, specifically in terms of foreign direct investment and development models. In the subsequent discussion key ideas underpinning the Sino-African relationship, such as the Beijing consensus of socio-economic development, were critically contrasted to the reality of Chinese engagement with Africa.
The questions related to China’s new role in international politics continued to be the topic of the second day. In the fourth panel on China and international trade, two lawyers (Chieh Huang from UNNC and Pasha L. Hsieh from the Singapore Management University) presented papers assessing the roles of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In particular, the abilities of the organisation to resolve trade disputes and the mitigation of its rather difficult relations with China were discussed critically. Issues of censorship and intellectual property rights were also highlighted during the intense question and answer session.
The papers for the panel “China in Global Governance” were engaging and raised a number of interesting propositions. They interrogated the opportunities and challenges of China’s new role within the global world and highlighted a number of overlapping, intertwined debates that served to demonstrate China’s inextricability from its position as a significant world actor. Joel Wuthow’s paper ‘Deliberating Peace: China, strategic choice and the politics of collective security’ explored the intricacies of why China acts both in a cooperative manner and ‘indifferent’ or disinterested player within the Security Council. The paper points out the strategic reasons and norms driven behaviour of China’s action on the world stage signifying a willingness to engage as a responsible world player but occasionally punctuated by political realism of states. Nadine Bosse’s paper ‘China within global governance’ equally examined how China’s role has evolved through an examination of its interaction with NGOs, INGOs and on another level how regionalism and internationalism has shaped and been shaped by China’s conscious engagement. May Tan-Mullins, Giles Mohan and Marcus Power’s paper ‘Redefining ‘Aid’ in the China-Africa context: Global Governance, Chinese modalities and local Impact’ explored the effect of China’s engagement with Africa through the prism of aid. The paper highlights the competing perception of ‘good cop-bad cop’ in the realm of developmental aid and how China has sought to redefine this field as a ‘value free’ realm. Relatively, while the papers did have some superficial weaknesses, they managed to collectively highlight and demonstrate an undeniable influence China has gained on the global stage and how it has exercised this influence to the extent that it has.
In the afternoon the so-called peaceful rise of China and its complicated joggling between the US and the EU came to the foreground. Xin Li and Verner Worm from the Copenhagen Business School defended the concept of soft power to better understand how China can use its economic strength to influence world politics. Notably the attraction of China’s economic success should be used more to strengthen China’s position in the world. Abigail Greenwald from the German Society for Foreign Policy analysed the reasons why the US and the EU struggle both in developing consistent approaches to China. She emphasized that, even though the reasons for inconsistency were different, China managed in both cases to take advantage of these inconsistencies and to play one US agency against another, or one EU member state against another. She ended with a plea to more coherence within the EU and US policies towards China but also a closer collaboration between the two actors in order to enable a more constructive dialogue with China.
In how far China’s foreign policy is driven by more general concerns for world affairs or by national interest alone was only one of the questions debated at the afternoon’s roundtable, the highlight of the conference. The roundtable was introduced by a keynote address by Alexander McLachlan from the Delegation of the European Commission in Beijing. McLachlan emphasized the need of a pragmatic approach in European and American politics in order to work together with China in solving major global problems. He critizised scholarly debates for easily drawing up smoke screens behind which essential political problems like that of environmental change are concealed. He made three concrete suggestions on how to model China’s relations with the West, namely to encourage Chinese politics in its international socialisation process and “to play by the rules”. He emphasized that China was living through two processes at a time: opening up and internationalizing on the one hand, and renegotiating its internal identity. The world had an interest in and an obligation of supporting China in this double process.
The question where we are in this process was consequently one of the main themes of debate on the roundtable in which Mr McLachlan, Professor Richard Balme from the Public Policy Program of Peking University and Sciences Po, Dr. Joseph Askew and Dr. David Kiwuwa participated and which was chaired by Dr. Catherine Goetze, Head of the Division International Studies at UNNC. Particularly the question of development and if and how far China constituted an alternative development model provoked controversial debate. Even though there was a general consensus that China had gone a far away in the past 30 years, particularly with respect to poverty alleviation and overall prosperity, doubts persisted if the Chinese way could be transposed to other areas of the world, or even if there was a thing like a “Beijing consensus”. On the way other topics closely related to this one were addressed like Western perceptions of China’s identity and nationalism, China’s colonial past, and the need for China and the West to collaborate closely to solve global problems. Students of the Division participated lively in this debate and were the pride of their lecturers.
The panel on “Institutions and Politics in China” the next morning brought together three different papers. The first from Lili Hernandez on the dilemmas and misunderstandings of foreigners in China provoked a lively debate. Caixiang Duoje, from Qinghai Normal University, gave an excellent paper on the problems and progress of education for ethnic Tibetans in the province of Qinghai. Gerald Roche, also from Qinghai Normal University, presented a very interesting paper on the impact of globalization on Qinghai’s Mangghuer and their version of the Nadum festival. Both these papers resulted in an extended and stimulating discussion that threw much light on an unfairly neglected part of Inner Asia.
The two papers presented in the subsequent panel on ‘China’s Rapid Social Change’ reflected on the social diversity and conflict that has emerged as a result of the post-1978 Chinese reforms. The paper of Frido Wenten’s (Free University of Berlin) described how the economic transition from state (socialist) to private (capitalist-like) economy reshaped the Chinese urban and rural working class, while also depriving it of the basic benefits previously associated with a socialist economy. Meanwhile, the paper of Jeanette Barbieri (Hollins University, USA) and Li Nan (Chinese Academy of Social sciences) highlighted the effort of the authorities to create an image of national unity (at a time of emergency) of a society in fact increasingly divided along social and ethnic lines.
The two papers gave us an insight in the top-down effort of the Chinese authorities to compose social conflict in the name of social harmony, on the one hand, and the bottom-up response – both positive and negative – from society itself, on the other hand. Wenten’s paper showed the new, officially acknowledged role of the trade unions as agents of negotiations between workers and their employers, including owners of companies with foreign capital, to channel post-reforms workers’ discontent and limit their exploitation in view of maintaining social order and political stability. Barbieri and Li’s paper counter the official imagery of national heroes of the earthquake used in the official exhibitions on that natural disaster with alternative and often less harmonious images and interpretations offered on internet.
An interesting part of the papers was the reference to the new and old means of communication used to express views and opinions. This ranged from the evidently still strong reference to the older tradition of socialist realism in the official iconography of heroism in the case of the heroes of the earthquake to the newest tools offered by globalization (internet in the first place) , to either support or contrast official voices.
The conference concluded on a final panel session about China’s economy, chaired by Qing-Ping Ma from Nottingham University Business School in Ningbo. First, Jack Marr from NYU Stern in Shanghai presented his analysis of Shanghai’s chances to outwit Hong Kong as financial hub in Asia. His cautiously optimistic analysis that Shanghai did represent some strengths that would allow in some distant future a strong standing of its stockmarket was well complemented by Michael Panton’s (Syracuse University) analysis of the state of China’s banking sector reform. In both cases, it became clear that the existing system was not sustainable even though it has held China out of the current financial world turbulences. Panton did see some encouraging steps of banking sector reform, however, he made clear that a complete liberalisation and independence hinged on prerequisites like the rule of law (and the rule by law), RMB convertibility, the tidying up of bad loans etc. which were still not foreseeable for the near future.
The conference was of course about more than just academics. In the evenings, participants made the trip to Ningbo’s fashionable Lao Waitan district where they wound down in the riverside cafes against the backdrop of the city’s spectacular skyline. The closing dinner in the Four Seasons Hotel was an occasion to sample local culinary delights and celebrate Catherine’s birthday with Chinese cake. We hope that everyone had a fantastic time and hope to welcome you back at UNNC in the future.