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November 27 Scottish Music & Dance Party Scottish Music & Dance Party Organized by the British Council Grand Millennium Hotel, Beijing 19:00 - 21:30, 27 November 2008 UK Alumni only! November 25 From Quantity to Quality From Quantity to Quality How to Improve Innovations at Chinese Higher Education Shangri-la Hotel, Beijing 24 November 2008 Hosted by: Department of Science & Technology, Ministry of Education Department of International Cooperation, Ministry of Education Co-hosted by: Science & Technology Division, Elsevier Invited Speakers:
 Judy, Xibai and Helen at the conference November 20 Timothy Garton Ash at PKU Timothy Garton Ash, a known historian, political writer, Guardian Columnist, and professor from Oxford is giving a talk, titled "China-Europe-US: A Strategic Triangle for the 21st Century" at Peking University campus late this week: When: Friday, Nov. 21, 9:00-11:30 am Where: Room 126 Leo Koguan Building, School of Government, PKU For the detailed info. about the speaker, please check the following website: http://www.timothygartonash.com/biography.html Mini-Review: Prof Ash delivers an interesting talk, more appropriately, an educated guess on international geo-politics of the next two decades. As a historian, he traces the rises and falls of hegemonies and notices that if China's GDP continued to grow at the current rate, in little less than 20 years, the country would surpass the US as the world's largest economy, measured in purchasing power parity. Polls conducted around the world suggest a growing public perception that China would replace the US as the new superpower, something that was unimagineable a generation ago. The re-emergence of China as the first non-Western modernity will have a long-lasting impact on world order. The transitions between hegemonies have rarely been a peaceful process, the only exception being the UK-US transition last century, which benefited greatly from shared cultures and the work of such political masterminds as Churchill. The situation for China is not very promising: the cultural and ideological differences may well lead to world-wide conflicts and hinder China's ascendency. The perils that lie ahead can be avoided by a Liberal International Order. There is, however, a subtle catch here: Liberal means equal liberties under law, while Order implies respect for national sovereignty. The two values could potentially be at odds and only through international negotiations and sophisticated bargaining can we solve such issues. Therefore the US, EU and China, who are likely to become the key global players (despite objections Prof Ash relegates India and Russia to regional players) must build trust and strategic ties. In particular, Prof Ash advocates for a much closer EU-China relationship, which according to him, is not only under-valued and under-developed, but also under-conceptualized. Both the speaker and the audience are worried about this transition period, and their concerns are well justified. "Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will", as Prof Ash puts it, is probably the only way for us to carry forward. |
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