Media

“The Governance of China” international conference

14 Jan 2016

 

 With the rise of Xi Jinping, are some of the assumptions which have shaped our view of China in the post-Mao era now in need of revision?

The Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong and the New York Review of Books Foundation of New York City are jointly holding a conference on January 15-16 (Friday and Saturday) on the subject of 'The Governance of China'. 

The conference will be introduced by Professor Peter Mathieson, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong; Robert Silvers, Editor of the New York Review of Books, and Georg Fredrik Rieber-Mohn, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Fritt-Ord Foundation of Norway, a leading conference sponsor.

A focus for all the conference panels will be whether, with the rise of Xi Jinping as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, a number of ideological and historical themes may be coming together to form a vision of China's present and future course which may differ significantly from those inherited from the era of Deng Xiaoping. These may include: the concept of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and within it an enhanced role of state owned sectors of the economy.

Also to be discussed include the concept of the Chinese Dream as a vision of economic and national rejuvenation which may including a stronger emphasis on China's global role,  with a possible impact on China's relations with Hong Kong; and a greater emphasis on the ideological dimension  of education, literature, the arts, the law, and the media, and especially the social media. 

Speakers on the conference's seven panels will include distinguished participants from Hong Kong, Mainland China, the US and Europe. They include Professor John P Burns, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at HKU; Professor Fu Hualing, the Head of the Department of Law at HKU; Professor Yuen-Ying Chan, Founding Director of the Journalism and Media Studies Center at HKU and Professor Willy Wo-Lap Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  

Participants from the Mainland include Professors Pan Wei and Hu Yong of Peking University; and Professors Wang Hui, Wang Zhenmin and Liu Yu from Tsinghua University. Participants from the United States include Professor Andrew Nathan of Columbia University, New York, and Professor Perry Link of the University of California, Riverside.   

Details of the conference are as follows:

Date and time:
January 15, 2016 (Friday): 9:30am (opening ceremony) to 6:15pm
January 16, 2016 (Saturday): 10am to 4pm

Venue: Hall 2, Lee Shau Kee Lecture Centre, at the University's Centennial Campus on Pokfulam Road.

Visit the conference website at: http://www.socsc.hku.hk/icgc/

For media enquiries, please contact Miss Vanessa Sit, Assistant Registrar of the HKU Faculty of Social Sciences, tel: 3917 1203, email: vansit@hku.hk.