傳媒

Distinguished economist in international trade speaks at HKU (English only)

2012年07月03日

 

Internationally renowned economist Professor Jagdish N. Bhagwati is going to speak at the Hong Kong APEC Study Centre Public Lecture jointly organised by the School of Economics and Finance and the Hong Kong Institute of Economics and Business Strategy of the University of Hong Kong.

You are cordially invited to attend and to report on the lecture with detail as follows:

Date: July 4, 2012 (Wednesday)

Time: 5.45pm – 7.00pm
(Media registration starts at 5.15pm)

Venue: Rayson Huang Theatre, Main Campus, The University of Hong Kong

Topic: The Fall of Doha and the Rise of Trans-Pacific Partnership

Language:  English

• Seats are limited, please make reservation by phone.

About the lecture:

After 10 years of negotiations, the Doha Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations (MTN) has been virtually abandoned.  While Robert Zoellick (USTR) and Pascal Lamy (EU Trade Commissioner) did not hesitate to point the finger unjustifiably at the G-22 group of developing countries when Doha negotiations failed at Cancun in 2003, there has been reluctance to point the finger at the culprit, the United States whose intransigent demand killed Doha.

The near-death of Doha is not the only damage that the United States has done to the world trading system and the WTO – the nature of that damage will be discussed in the Lecture – but the United States has compounded the damage by backing instead the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).  This discriminatory Preferential Trade Agreement, by building into itself numerous (some still secretive) US-lobbies-fed demands for all kinds of extraneous trade-unrelated demands, has made it impossible for Asian countries like India and China to join the TPP, thus threatening to divide Asia into two blocs, just as a similar policy in South America has already divided that Continent into the proposed Brazil-led FTAA bloc and the Andean Group bloc built along the alternative lines of NAFTA.

About the speaker

Professor Jagdish Bhagwati is a University Professor at Columbia University and a Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.  He has been Economic Policy Adviser to Arthur Dunkel, Director General of GATT (1991-93), Special Adviser to the UN on Globalization, and External Adviser to the WTO.  He has served on the Expert Group appointed by the Director General of the WTO on the Future of the WTO and the Advisory Committee to Secretary General Kofi Annan on the NEPAD process in Africa, and was also a member of the Eminent Persons Group under the chairmanship of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on the future of UNCTAD.  Five volumes of his scientific writings and two of his public policy essays have been published by MIT press.  The recipient of six festschrifts in his honor, he has also received several prizes and honorary degrees, including awards from the governments of India (Padma Vibhushan) and Japan (Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star).  Professor Bhagwati's latest book In Defense of Globalization was published by Oxford University Press in 2004 to worldwide acclaim.

For media enquiry and reservation, please contact:
Helen Wong
Communications Manager
Faculty of Business and Economics
The University of Hong Kong
Tel: +852 6199 6988 / +852 2219 4311
Email: hgewong@hku.hk

－Ends－

About the Faculty of Business and Economics
Founded in 2001 through the amalgamation of the School of Business and the School of Economics and Finance, the Faculty of Business and Economics (FBE) offers quality degree programmes and executive training programmes that serve the needs of the business sector and the community.

As Asia’s premier international business school, the Faculty has pioneered the International MBA Programme with Fudan University in Shanghai in 1998, and the EMBA Global Asia jointly offered with Columbia Business School (CBS) and London Business School (LBS) in 2008.

Its MBA full time programme, offered in partnerships with CBS and LBS has a strong Asia and China focus and was ranked Asia’s no. 1 in the World MBA Rankings released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in 2010 and 2011.

The Faculty continues to attract top students from Hong Kong and beyond.  It admits the highest proportion of non-local undergraduate students amongst all the 10 Faculties. Three of its undergraduate programmes are ranked among the University’s top 10 programmes. 

FBE is fully accredited by the European Quality Improvement Systems (EQUIS).  Its accounting and business programmes are also accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).  For more information, please visit: www.fbe.hku.hk