During their visit to Hong Kong and Beijing, the heads of GLOBUS’ research groups took part in a range of seminars and meetings with academics and policy stakeholders.
On the first day of the trip, the GLOBUS team was hosted by Dr. Kenneth Chan and Prof. Jean-Pierre Cabestan at the Department of Government and International Studies (GIS), Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU). The group met with EU foreign policy researchers to discuss EU-Hong Kong-China politics and the role of China in world politics. GIS had also organised a seminar together with the Comparative Governance Centre and the Hong Kong Association for European Studies. Later that day, the GLOBUS team discussed EU-Hong Kong relations and the relations between Hong Kong and mainland China with representatives of Hong Kong civil society.
Meetings of the second day of the visit were mostly focused on global climate governance. The GLOBUS team visited Hong Kong University, where Dr. Jung Eun Kim, Dr. Nicky Y.F. Lam and Dr. Hongsheng Zhang presented their findings on different aspects of climate change, including Chinese climate change governance and public policy design, environmental technology transfer and the use of satellites to inform Chinese policies on climate change.
The sessions on climate change were followed by a meeting with Prof. Z. Tao, who discussed with the GLOBUS researchers the obstacles and opportunities of EU-China trade relations, as well as presented an overview of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and China’s views on development in Africa.
The final meeting of the day was in the Hong Kong EU Office, where EU officials spoke about relations between Hong Kong and mainland China, the day-to-day work of EU diplomats in the area, and their engagement with the local stakeholders.
On the third day of the visit, the GLOBUS team travelled to Beijing, where it met with a group of staff from GLOBUS partner Renmin University of China. The GLOBUS team hosted a seminar to a large group of students and staff, at which they presented the project’s research themes and engaged in discussions with the audience.
On day four of the trip, the GLOBUS team visited the Peking University, School of Government, and spoke to Prof. Li Qiang, Director of the Centre for European Studies. Prof. Qiang provided a comprehensive coverage of Chinese perspectives on global justice and global issues, including climate change, developmental aid and the BRI, security issues in the South China Sea and peacekeeping in Africa, EU-China cooperation, as well as views on the local context and the relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China.
The afternoon was reserved firstly for a visit to the Irish Embassy to China, where the GLOBUS team received a European Member State perspective on the issues the team learned during the previous days, by Ambassador Eoin O’Leary and his colleagues. Later in the afternoon, Ben Tonra gave a lecture at Peking University on Brexit and its impact on Irish and European Security.
On the fifth and final day of the study trip, the GLOBUS team visited the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and its Institute of European Studies (IES) for an informal dialogue between research staff from the IES and the GLOBUS researchers. Besides empirical examples and issues, this meeting also discussed political theory and philosophy. The discussion finished with a debate at cross-purposes on the role of gender in Chinese society and governance.
