2024
How can China and USA compete without making war?
The world is rife with conflict and China and USA are engaged in intensified competition and rivalry. What will it take to steer the two superpowers from ending in armed conflict?
Time and place: Feb. 26, 2024 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM, NUPI, Norsk utenrikspolitisk institutt
NB: This event will be hosted by NUPI, Norwegian Institute for Foreign Affairs. See NUPI's event page and sign up here.
In this seminar, we zoom in on the East and Southeast Asia regions, where China and USA compete for influence and where territorial disputes make war a possible scenario. Regional powers, with more and less good or tense relations to China, and some of them with formal alliance ties to USA, encircle areas and oceans with valuable resources and the world’s busiest shipping routes. The Taiwan question remains a center piece of geopolitical tension in the region.
Professor Kai He (Griffith University, Australia) will in this seminar give a talk about his work on the prospects for what he calls institutional peace. He argues that competition or rivalry may not end in war, but provide conditions for “constructive competition”, keeping China and USA put in peaceful coexistence. However, the question of which types of economic, political, and military conditions this will depend on remains critically important.
In addition to regional issues we will address, considering China-USA relations, the possible implications of the war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, and other international conflicts.
After Kai He's presentation, there will be a panel discussion. Here you will find Stein Tønnesson, Research Professor Emeritus and former Director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). Other participants TBC. There will be opportunity to ask questions to the panelists.
The seminar is moderated by Senior Research Fellow at NUPI, Hans Jørgen Gåsemyr.
This seminar is co-organized with the Fudan-European Center for China Studies, which is coordinating Kai He’s visit to Norway. Kai He is Professor of International Relations at Griffith University, Australia. The event is also organized with connection to Center for geopolitics, led by NUPI.
The seminar will take place at NUPI from 10:00 to 11:30.
This event will not be streamed.
About the speaker:
Kai He is a Professor of International Relations in the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University, Australia. He is currently a fellow of the Academy of International Affairs-NRW in Bonn, Germany (January-March 2024). He was also a non-resident Senior Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace (2022-2023). Previously, he served as an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow (2017-2020) and as a postdoctoral fellow in the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program (2009-2010). He has authored or co-authored six books and edited or co-edited five volumes. Among his notable works are After Hedging: Hard Choices for the Indo Pacific States between the US and China (co-authored with Huiyun Feng, Cambridge Elements in IR, 2023), Contesting Revisionism: China, the United States, and Transformation of International Order (co-authored with Steve Chan, Huiyun Feng, Weixing Hu, Oxford, 2021), China’s Crisis Behavior: Political Survival and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2016), China’s Challenges and International Order Transition: Beyond “Thucydides’s Trap” (co-edited with Huiyun Feng, University of Michigan Press, 2020), and Contested Multilateralism 2.0 and Asian Security Dynamics (Routledge 2020).
Organiser
NUPI and FECCS
2023
The Institutional Foundation of Economic Development
Open lecture with professor Shiping Tang.
Time and place: Oct. 23, 2023 2:15 PM – 3:30 PM, Seminar room 1, P.A Munchs hus
About the lecture
nstitutions matter for economic development. Yet despite this accepted wisdom, new institutional economics has yet to provide a comprehensive look at what constitutes the institutional foundation of economic development.
Bringing together findings from a range a fields, from development economics and development studies to political science and sociology, The Institutional Foundation of Economic Development, professor Shiping Tang's newest book, explores the precise mechanisms through which institutions affect growth.
Shiping Tang contends that institutions shape economic development through four “Big Things”: possibility, incentive, capability, and opportunity. From this perspective, the institutional foundation of economic development has six major dimensions: political hierarchy, property rights, social mobility, redistribution, innovation protection, and equal opportunity.
Tang further argues that the institutional foundation of economic development is only one pillar within the New Development Triangle: sustained economic development also requires strong state capacity and sound socioeconomic policies.
How to participate?
Please sign up by following the link below to the form on Nettskjema for either in person or virtual participation.
Sign up here
About Shiping Tang
Professor Shiping Tang holds the position of Fudan Distinguished Professor and Dr. Seaker Chan Chair Professor at, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
He also holds a “Chang-Jiang/Cheung Kong Scholar” Distinguished Professorship from the Chinese Ministry of Education, the highest honor a social scientist can hold in China.
He has a very broad research interest and has published widely, covering international relations, comparative politics, institutional economics, methodology, philosophy of the social sciences, political theory and sociology.
He has also developed powerful platforms for complex decision making based Computational Social Sciences (CSS). He has published five single-authored volumes so far.
His more recent two books include: The Institutional Foundation of Economic Development, (Princeton University Press, 2022) and On Social Evolution: Phenomenon and Paradigm (Routledge, 2020). His The Social Evolution of International Politics (Oxford University Press, 2013), received the International Studies Association (ISA) “Annual Best Book Award” in 2015.
He was the first Chinese and Asian (actually, the first non-Western) scholar to receive this prestigious book award. He is also the author of A Theory of Security Strategy for Our Time: Defensive Realism (Palgrave Macmillan 2010), A General Theory of Institutional Change (Routledge, 2011 hardcover, paperback 2013), and many articles in leading international journals.
You can read more about his recent book here:
The Institutional Foundation of Economic Development | Princeton University Press
Organiser
Fudan-European Centre for China Studies
Meeting the Climate and Energy Challenges in a Changing World
As the world grapples with the devastating effects of climate change and mounting geopolitical tensions, we find ourselves at a critical juncture in history. How can major global powers, such as Europe, China, and the U.S., bolster their confidence, competence, and capacity to effectively tackle these urgent issues in the face of an ever-evolving world?
Time and place: May 8, 2023 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM, Domus Bibliotheca
Open forum - 11:00-12:30
UiO Rector Svein Stølen and Fudan President Li JIN will offer welcoming remarks. The forum will be chaired by Vice-Rector for Climate & the Environment and Cross-Disciplinarity Mette Halskov Hansen.
Keynote Speaker
Susan Shirk, Research professor, Chair of the 21st Century China Center, UC San Diego.
Panelists
Libo WU (Professor, Director of Center for Energy Economics and Strategy Studies, Fudan University): How can China improve its response to climate and energy challenges?
Vebjørn Bakken (Director of UiO:Energy and Environment): Europe: Strong climate ambitions built on weak supply lines?
Michael Davidson (Assistant Professor, School of Global Policy and Strategy and Jacobs School of Engineering, UCSD): The advantage of collaboration in global climate action
Dan Banik (Professor, Director of The Oslo SDG Initiative, UiO): Powering a sustainable future: Meeting climate and energy challenges in the Global South
About the presenters
Susan Shirk
Susan Shirk is research professor and founding chair of the 21st Century China Center. She is one of the most influential experts working on U.S.-China relations and Chinese politics. Her current book is "Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise", which illuminates China's politics and its evolving role on the world's stage since 2008. Her articles have appeared in leading academic publications in the fields of political science, international relations and China studies, and her views on a range of issues relating to modern Chinese politics are highly sought. She is also co-chair of the UC San Diego Forum on U.S.-China Relations, the first ongoing high-level forum focused entirely on the U.S.-China relationship.
Besides her academic work, Shirk is also known for her extensive policy experience, especially in U.S.-China relations. From 1997-2000, Shirk served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs. She is the founder of, and remains active in, the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD), a Track II forum for discussions of security issues among defense and foreign ministry officials and academics from the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the Koreas.
Libo WU
Libo WU is Professor of School of Economics and School of Big Data at Fudan University, the Dean of the Shanghai Research Institute for Energy and Carbon Neutrality Strategy, the Deputy Dean of Fudan University Big Data Research Institute. Wu’s research revolves around energy environment economics and policy assessment modeling research, big data application statistical analysis, and computational social science research. In 2019, She was the recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars.
In 2016, she was selected as a Young Changjiang Scholar by the Ministry of Education. She has published more than 70 papers in PNAS, Nature Sustainability, Nature Climate Change, Energy Economics, and other domestic and foreign journals. She has presided over and undertaken more than 30 national, provincial and ministerial projects, including major projects of the National Social Science Fund, national "863" projects, key research and development projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology, "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" science and technology support plan projects, and major projects of the Ministry of Education's key bases for humanities and social sciences.
Vebjørn Bakken
Vebjørn Bakken is a theoretical chemist with a Ph.D. on implementing and applying methods for molecular dynamics. He has since 2018 been leading UiO:Energy and Environment, one of three strategic priority areas at the University of Oslo. Prior to that, from 2011-2018, he headed the Centre for Materials Science and Nanotechnology (SMN) at UiO. He has also had several research and teaching positions, and amongst other contributed to establishing a research school in solar cell technology as part of the The Norwegian Research Centre for Solar Cell Technology
Michael Davidson
Michael Davidson is an assistant professor in the School of Global Policy and Strategy and the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He is a faculty member with the 21st Century China Center the Center for Commerce and Diplomacy, and the Japan Forum for Innovation and Technology, all located at UC San Diego. He is currently a fellow with the Public Intellectuals Program at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
Michael Davidson’s research focuses on the engineering implications and institutional conflicts inherent in deploying renewable energy at scale. He is particularly interested in systems within emerging electricity markets, including China and India, as well as the western U.S.
Prior to joining UC San Diego, Davidson was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center’s Environment and Natural Resources Program. He received his Ph.D. in engineering systems at the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, where he was a researcher with the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and a member of the Tsinghua-MIT China Energy and Climate Project.
Dan Banik
Dan Banik is Professor of Political Science and Director of The Oslo SDG Initiative at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo. Banik has written extensively on poverty, politics and development in the Global South, and teaches several courses on development and inclusivity. He has also been appointed extraordinary professor at the University of Pretoria's (UP) Albert Luthuli Leadership Institute (ALLI).
Banik also hosts a weekly podcast, named ‘In Pursuit of Development’. This global programme features conversations with leading scholars, policymakers and activists and offers a deeper understanding of the politics of global development. Each episode discusses the experiences of developing and emerging economies in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Lunch and networking - 12:30-14:00
Attendees will be offered vegetarian refreshments at the venue and may take this time to mingle.
How to participate
Please sign up by following the link below to the form on Nettskjema. Please note down any dietary requirements in the sign-up form. The event is open to all.
Sign up here
Organiser
Fudan-UC Center on Contemporary China, 21st Century China Center , Fudan-European Centre for China Studies and UiO:Energy and Environment
Crossing the Flood by Feeling the Rooftops: Perspectives on Nations and Democracy During Climate Change
Climate change and global environmental issues challenge normative ideas of democracy, and nation-building seem to counteract the need to maintain global perspectives. In this open seminar, professors of philosophy Alejandra Mancilla and Tongdong Bai offer perspectives on how to reinterpret these ideas in the Post-Holocene.
Time and place: Mar. 2, 2023 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM, CET (20:00-21:30 CST) on Zoom. Please click here to register for this online session.
Who is the demos when there is no one there?
Presented by Professor Alejandra Mancilla.
Despite being celebrated for promoting peace, the protection of the environment and scientific cooperation in a whole continent, some have criticized the Antarctic Treaty for lacking representativeness at the global level and have proposed ways to make it more democratic and participative. These proposals have mostly assumed that it is humans only who have interests in Antarctica, and that it is through their states that they should be represented.
While agreeing with their diagnosis, in this paper I question both the methodological nationalism and the methodological anthropocentrism underlying these approaches and ask: Should not Antarctica itself be represented? New developments in domestic and international environmental law are leading to recognize the rights of rivers, ecosystems, and other natural entities, granting them legal (and arguably, moral) standing, and assigning them their own representatives. Analogously, one could propose to have Antarctica represented too. But, if this is the way to go, who is “Antarctica”, and who should speak in its name?
To answer these questions, I review some usual candidates for determining the demos and propose that the Antarctic Treaty should be expanded to include more than the mere interests of humans in the decision-making process. I conclude by suggesting that this model should also be applied in other humanly uninhabited places and inhabited places.
How to kill three birds (strength of the state, refugee crisis, and climate change) with one stone? – A Confucianism-inspired proposal
Presented by Professor Bai Tongdong.
The present democratic and global institutions are also ill-equipped to deal with climate change, a “perfect storm” to these institutions. The impacts of climate changes tend to be long-term and are often not evenly distributed among peoples of different regions, classes, and generations, whereas democracies can be set in motion when the majority of presently living voters of a particular state feels a clear and present danger. Globally, the situation is even worse, as there is no world government even if a majority of states agrees to do something about climate change.
I will argue that Confucianism can offer institutional responses to climate challenges. Domestically, a Confucianism-inspired hybrid regime combines popular elements with meritocratic ones, and the meritocratic branch of the government may address the issue of climate change better, as it is not beholden to the short-term material interests of the majority of the presently living voters. Internationally, in a Confucianism-inspired “New Tian Xia Order,” though sovereignty and the existence of states are acknowledged, sovereignty is conditioned on a state’s fulfillment of the duty to its own people and, to a lesser extent, to the rest of the world. This offers justification for international interventions, which should be carried out by the alliances of the “civilized” states that play the role of a benevolent world police and enforces humanity’s collective duty to the protection of the environment. As an example, I will show how a state can take care of its own interests while helping peoples from troubled states through controlled migration, and this solution can avoid the exacerbation of climate change due to population boom.
About the presenters
Alejandra Mancilla
Alejandra Mancilla is professor of philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo. She works on global justice, human rights, territorial rights, animal and environmental ethics. Currently, she leads the five-year project “Dynamic Territory”, aimed at rethinking territorial governance in times of climatic, geographic, and demographic change, and she is working on a book project about Antarctica and/in political theory. She is the author of The Right of Necessity: Moral Cosmopolitanism and Global Poverty (Rowman & Littlefield 2016). Her work has been published in the Journal of Political Philosophy, Ethics and International Affairs, Grotiana, The Journal of Applied Philosophy, and Polar Record, among others.
Tongdong Bai
Dr. Tongdong Bai is the Dongfang Chair Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University in China, and a Global Professor of Law at NYU’s Law School. His research interests include Chinese philosophy and political philosophy. He has two books published in English: China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom (Zed Books, 2012), and Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case (Princeton University Press, 2019). He is now working on the philosophy of Han Fei Zi (c. 280-233 BCE), a “Legalist” and a harsh critic of Confucians, as well as a real-life princeling who is often compared with Machiavelli and Hobbes. Dr. Bai is also the director of an English-based MA and visiting program in Chinese philosophy at Fudan University that is intended to promote the studies of Chinese philosophy in the world.
About the seminar
This seminar will be an open forum on Zoom. The presenters will spend the first thirty minutes presenting their perspectives, followed by an open discussion. Participants are free and encouraged to join the discussion with their own perspectives.
Organiser
The Fudan-European Centre for China Studies
2022
Fudan-UiO Multidisciplinary Webinar on Ageing
Welcome to this online webinar on ageing, led by professors Xiuyan GUO of the Fudan Institute of Ageing and Ole Andreassen of the UiO Centre of Excellence NORMENT.
Time and place: Dec. 14, 2022 8:00 AM – 9:30 AM, CET. Please register for the webinar on Zoom.
This webinar will feature two sessions of three presentations each, all led by scholars from UiO and Fudan with expertise in the study of ageing and related conditions.
Format
First session, led by Prof. Ole Andreassen (08:00-08:30):
Dementia research in Nordic countries – novel opportunities
Ole Andreassen, Director of Centre of Excellence NORMENT, Faculty of Medicine, UiO.
Genetic overlap between brain MRI and mental traits
Weiqiu Cheng, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow at NORMENT, Faculty of Medicine, UiO.
Mathematical modelling of healthy aging and dementia
Alexey Shadrin, Researcher at NORMENT, Faculty of Medicine, UiO.
Discussion (08:30-08:40).
Second session led by Prof. Xiuyan GUO (08:40-09:10)
Enhanced emotional stability and the neural corelates in older adults with long-term Tai Chi experience
Xiuyan GUO, Director of Laboratory for Psychology and Behavioural Sciences on ageing, Fudan Institute on Aging, FDU
Dynamics between psychological and physiological needs among older people
Jing LI, postdoctoral researcher, Center for Population and Development Studies, FDU
Proposal of collaborative research: Detecting Event-Related Ageing with Time-Locked Approach in a Prospective Cohort
Yang LU, Assistant Research fellow, Fudan Institute on Aging, FDU
Discussion (09:10-09:20)
Mutual discussion and wrap-up (09:20-09:30).
About the presenters
From UiO
Ole Andreassen is the director of the Center of Excellence NORMENT. He has worked with basal brain research at the Harvard Medical School and as a research fellow at the University of Bergen. His research interests concern clinical translation research in serious psychiatric ailments, especially the study of connections between genetic and environmental causes and somatic health in serious mental illnesses.
Weiqiu Cheng is a neuroscientist with focus on psychiatric disorders, with a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellows in the Scientia Fellows II programme at UiO, supported by the EU. Her current research concerns heritability in schizophrenia, drawing on data from among other sources genome-wide association datasets, Norwegian biobank, and registry samples.
Alexey Shadrin is a mathematician, working on mathematical modelling tools for mental traits and disorders, applying big data analytics. He is part of the research group on precision psychiatry and developed novel statistical tools to study the genetic complexity across a number of disorders, including schizophrenia, for his postdoc.
From Fudan
Xiuyan GUO gained her PHD in basic psychology at East China Normal University. Her research interests include experimental psychology, psychology of ageing and cognitive neuroscience. She is currently working to explore the psychological and behavioural characteristics of ageing and the corresponding brain changes using methods and techniques from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience.
Jing’s research interests are based in social psychology. She gained her MPhil and PhD at University of Cambridge studying social cognition. This led on to her current, two-year state-funded postdoctoral research position with FDU.
Yang LU gained his PHD in basic psychology at East China Normal University. His research interests include computational cognitive neuroscience, psychology of sleep and psychology of ageing. He has combined behavioural experiments, brain imaging, computational modelling to explore the mechanism of human ageing, learning, memory and sleep.
Organiser
The Fudan-European Centre for China Studies, NORMENT: Norwegian Centre for Mental Disorders Research and Fudan Institute of Ageing
2021
Shanghai Forum 2021 “Recovery and resilience: Asia’s role in a sustainable future"
Shanghai Forum, launched in 2005, is known as one of the most famous international forums held in Shanghai. The Forum is co-hosted by Fudan University and Chey Institute for Advanced Studies, undertaken by Fudan Development Institute (FDDI).
Time and place: Oct. 29, 2021 – Oct. 31, 2021, Fudan Development Institute
The annual conference of Shanghai Forum in 2021 gives a special focus on the recovery and resilience of Asia, as well as Asia’s role in a sustainable future.
UiO Rector Sven Stølen will be giving a keynote speech and share his messages about University’s role in meeting the challenge highlighted by the sustainability agenda.
The Forum in 2021 is held in a hybrid form. All are welcome to attend. For more details, registration and Zoom-links, please visit the event webpage.
Organiser
Fudan Development Institute, Fudan University
Published Oct. 28, 2021 2:27 PM - Last modified Oct. 28, 2