schumacher china tour

Transitioning to an Ecological Civilisation: East

Course dates: 

Sunday, 18 June, 2017 to Friday, 30 June, 2017

Travel to various locations in China (Beijing, Chongqing and Chengdu Province), in collaboration with the Institute of Rural Reconstruction at Southwest University where you will experience first-hand the culture and ecology of China and have an opportunity to dialogue with intellectuals and activists about what creating an ecological civilisation means in contemporary China. We will visit inspiring projects as well as exploring the cultural and ecological roots to traditional Chinese wisdom rooted in Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism.  Participants will be introduced to the ancient holistic philosophy and practice of cultivating inner strength for outer action and have the unique opportunity to visit sacred places and monasteries related to modern day practices of these ancient holistic traditions.

Participants will explore the New Rural Reconstruction Movement and its one hundred year history.  This is the biggest yet peaceful social movement in China with several organisations and tens of thousands of volunteers.  The movement provides an alternative to American capitalism and Russian socialism and grows out of a strong intellectual and social heritage that has particular relevance to creating an ecological civilisation in contemporary China. 

The learning journey will take place in 3 locations.  In Beijing we will learn about the political, economic, social and cultural evolution based on Chinese history and crises we have experienced.  We will be introduced to Chinese holistic philosophy about life, in connection with society and nature. 

We will then take a slow train journey through central China to Chongqing in the Southwest.  Here we will explore the values and ideas underpinning the new rural reconstruction movement (and its rich history) and visit projects to see what it looks like in practice – from small scale renewable energy technologies to community supported agriculture. 

The third and final part of our journey takes place in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.  Here we will explore the cultural and ecological origins of traditional Chinese wisdom rooted in Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism.  Participants will be introduced to the ancient holistic philosophy and practice of cultivating inner strength for outer action. We will have a rare opportunity to visit sacred places and monasteries related to modern day practice of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism and consider what these holistic practices and methodologies can mean for the evolution to an ecological civilisation.

This is an educational experience that will appeal to community activists, NGO’s, students, researchers, policy makers and entrepreneurs interested in cross-cultural dialogue;  exchanging holistic theory and practice east and west, towards creating a global movement transitioning to an ecological civilisation.

The following areas will be included:

• Exploring current and historical crises in China
• Mapping the story of rural reconstruction as a social movement towards transitioning to an ecological civilisation
• Field visits to local rural reconstruction projects and participating in rural life
• Experiencing participatory processes with village groups (including seasonal calendars linking with climate change; and dream mapping)
• Dialogue with intellectuals and activists in the Rural Reconstruction Movement
• Re-valuing indigenous culture and traditional knowledge and its links to ancient ecological and holistic thinking and practices rooted in Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism
• Experiencing holistic practices for inner cultivation (such as calligraphy, TaiQi, and traditional tea ceremonies)
• Visiting sacred landscapes; holistic and ecological technologies and community living at an Eco-Taoist Monastery in the Qingcheng Mountains
• Synthesis, dialogue and sharing towards creating an ecological civilisation: East and West
• Developing seeds for new transition inspired initiatives in your own area

On Line Study:

• Preparatory readings and resources
• Steps and resources for setting up a project in your own area
• Developing action plans for project development
• On-line study, films and discussion forum
• Peer to peer support

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Teachers:

Julie Richardson
Julie has taught ecological economics and international development at the Universities of London and Sussex and has worked in sustainable development for over 20 years in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. This experience changed her view of ‘development’ – believing there is much we can learn from the wisdom of other cultures about sustainable livelihoods and restoring healthy relationship between human society and nature. Julie has created a synthesis between modern holistic science (including systems thinking and complexity science) and ancient holistic thinking in China to explore what health and wholeness means at different levels of scale (individual, community and planetary).   She is currently interested in exploring the links between modern holistic science and indigenous holistic science to explore what this means in practice for creating an ecological civilisation, east and west.

Professor Wen Tiejun
Executive Dean of the Institute of Advanced Studies of Sustainability of Renmin University of China, Beijing; the Institute of Rural Reconstruction of China, Southwest University, Chongqing; and the Institute of Rural Reconstruction of the Straits, Fujiang Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou. He is a renowned expert on sustainability, agrarian issues, policy studies, macro-economics, south-south cooperation, and inclusive growth.  He has published many books and articles including ‘Ecological Civilisation, Indigeneous Culture and Rural Reconstruction in China (Monthly Review, February 2012).

Mr. Li Shouli
Shouli Li comes from Qingzhou City, Shandong Province. He graduated from the China Agricultural University in 1991. He also had held a number of positions such as the Dean of the International Institute of IChing, the Vice Director of I Ching and Architecture Committee, the first President of Qingzhou Buddhist Association, the Honorary President of Qingzhou Mencius Mother Academy. Mr. Li has been deeply nurtured by Chinese traditional culture since his early age, and he has immersed himself in studying Chinese traditional culture for more than thirty years. He has been reviving theauthentic orthodox of Chinese traditions; reconstructing pedagogy in studying the original meanings of Chinese classics; he supports the syncretism of metaphysics and physics, and he also pursues the Using ideology. He has profound attainments in various traditional cultural subjects such as the Zhouyi study, Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, numerology, geomancy, and the Qi Men.

Zhang Lanying
Zhang Lanying is Executive Deputy Dean of the Institute of Rural Reconstruction of China, Southwest University, Chongqing; and Director of Liangshuming Rural Reconstruction Center, Beijing. She started her career in the field of social development work in the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction in 1992 and took the challenge of establishing ActionAid in China as the country director for ActionAid International in 2002, where she developed, managed and implemented projects, training/workshops and study programs in the area of sustainable agriculture, environmental education, health education and participatory development approach promotion.

Dr SIT Tsui, Margaret Jade
Associate Professor of the Institute of Rural Reconstruction of China, Southwest University, Chongqing, China. Her research areas include globalization, rural reconstruction, and cultural studies. She is board member of Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives (ARENA-UK)

ZhengBing
Zheng Bing is from the indigenous people from Zhaizi Village, Shanxi Province. She is now the Chief Director of Puhan Farmer’s Association. In 1998, she left her job as a Chinese literature teacher in a rural school and turned to lead her villagers to regenerate their villagein a comprehensive way of development. The confidence and happiness of life is her highest value. She sees her work in the service of the village and to create profitable activities to self sustain the development of the association and village. Today, her service focuses on sustaining village life, which includes rural finance, collective buying and selling, children’s education, community elderlycare, traditional hand craft practice and growing the farmer association as a comprehensive farmer’s cooperative.

Liu Yingsheng
LiuYinsheng was born in 1942, Caijiagang Town, Chongqing. He was former a middle school teacher. After retiring 30 years ago, he returned to his home to establish the Bayu Agriculture Museum. He collected thousands of agriculture tools in Bayu area and wrote over 1000 short poems to accompany the exhibits. Through his community work, he has been mapping and painting the former life in the local area. His hope is to sustain the traditional life of the town and make the exhibits and poems as a contribution to living history.

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East-West Dialogues Workshop in Beijing: Option

There is an option to participate in a two-day workshop ‘East-West Dialogues’ in Beijing on 3-4 July 2017 for an additional fee of £200.  ‘East – West Dialogues’ is a participatory workshop to explore the synergies between traditional Chinese culture, contemporary Western holism, and applications in modern life.   Further information will be posted at a later date. Fee:  £200: This is a special reduced fee for participants on the Transitioning to an Ecological Civilisation Programme. It covers workshop fee, accommodation and meals.  It does not cover transport to and from the workshop in Beijing. 

Fee: 

£ 1 990.00

Course fee includes all tuition, accommodation, meals and fields trips in the module in China and the on-line study circle. Please note, it does not include travel to and from China, personal travel insurance, visa fees, or any personal incidental expenses. The residential Module in China starts from Beijing and ends in Chengdu. Arrangements for participants to return to Beijing at the end of the programme can be organised for an additional fee of £150.

China Will Lead the Tech Industry

Connie Chan

Partner | Andreessen Horowitz

Connie Chan has a master’s degree in engineering from Stanford, where her classmates were Facebook’s future first employees. She thought that she knew what tech’s leading edge looked like. Then she went to China and discovered she had no idea. On massively popular messaging apps like WeChat, people did way more than just talk. They got marriage licenses and birth certificates, paid utilities and traffic tickets, even had drugs delivered—all in-app. Tech companies in the US, she realized, could no longer take it for granted that they led while the world followed; the stereo­type that China’s tech companies are just copycats is obsolete. “If you study Chinese products, you can get inspiration,” Chan says. As a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, she now specializes in helping American startups understand just how much they have to learn as China’s tech industry races ahead of the US in everything from messaging to livestreaming (now a $5 billion market). No matter the protectionist rhetoric coming from the Trump administration, US tech firms see billions of dollars to be made in China, and vice versa. As these two financial giants play overseas footsie, Chan acts as a facilitator. “I spend so much time teaching people what they can’t see,” she says. It won’t stay invisible for long. —Marcus Wohlsen

Romano Prodi's Lecture: A European Leader's Perspective

26 April 2017

By David Hongler (2016 Yenching Scholar) 

When a political figure as well known and experienced as Romano Prodi delivers a lecture, expectations are bound to be high. This was the case too on Wednesday morning, when the Yenching Academy had the pleasure and honour to welcome this important figure of European politics for a conversation with both Yenching Scholars and the wider PKU community on the topic of “Europe after Brexit”. Yenching Scholar Alessio Wei Chen (Italy, London School of Economics), Professor Zhang Fan of the History Department of Peking University, and Dean Yuan Ming of Yenching Academy delivered brief welcoming remarks. They expressed their delight at welcoming such a distinguished speaker, and highlighted the importance of such events for the fostering of mutual understanding between China and Europe. The lecture formed part of the wider lecture series “A World in Transition: A European Leader's Outlook”, and Professor Prodi was invited by the Peking University Global Fellowship program.

Considering his background in European politics, it was fitting that Professor Prodi came to the Academy to discuss the imminent reshuffle of the European political arrangement brought about by the United Kingdom's decision to leave the Union by 2019. Unsurprisingly, he considered it to be a very regrettable development. Indeed, he went so far as to describe it as a “suicide” by the British. He argued that the UK was not the disadvantaged victim of European bureaucracy, as Brexit proponents and major news outlets had often times portrayed it during the run-up to the referendum. Instead, Professor Prodi had - when he became President of the European Commission in 1999 - found himself at the helm of a European Union on which Britain exerted the most influence. He said that for him this was rather surprising, considering the popular narrative of France and especially Germany being the dominant states within the Union at the time. According to Professor Prodi, the UK held two decisive advantages: Firstly, he emphasised the unified manner in which British officials within the European Institutions defended British interests, with other member states' representatives often split along the lines of partisan politics rather than national interests. Secondly, he underlined the language advantage. The widespread usage of English for most of the communications and negotiations within the European institutions gave the UK a decisive edge in the decision-making processes. British influence began to wane only after the government had announced its intention to call a referendum on the British Union membership, which undermined its credibility among the smaller member states. 

Professor Prodi further addressed the role and influence of the media in bringing about Brexit. He noted that the depiction of the European Union and its policies in major UK media had been negative for many years. From his perspective, it became extraordinarily hard to convince people of the benefits associated with a membership. On a more general note, Professor Prodi warned against the destructive potential of one-sided and polemic media interventions in Western democracies. 

Apart from the many and pressing issues surrounding the UK's exit from the Union, Professor Prodi also discussed major European decisions over which he had direct influence during his tenure as President of the European Commission. It had been under his leadership, after all, that the Commission oversaw two of the most significant decisions in the history of the European Union. He guided both the formal introduction of the single currency in 2003, as well as the fifth expansion of the European Union in 2004, the so-called «Eastern enlargement».
Today, both of these decisions are discussed controversially. It was enlightening to hear Professor Prodi's insights into the political and institutional processes, by which both of these major changes came about. He emphasised the meticulous, at times tedious, process preceding these two institutional developments, refuting the idea that any of these decisions was made rashly and without a comprehensive analysis. He also stressed the difficulty of finding common ground among all the diverging national interests. For him, however, the opportunity for further integration on the European continent during his tenure was historic, and could quite simply not be allowed to pass: the train of history had to be taken. 

Over the course of the lecture, Professor Prodi often referred back to the history and origin of the European Union as an essential peace project in a Europe ravaged by two World Wars. He cited a conversation with Helmut Kohl, the former German Chancellor, who had mentioned the death of his brother during the Second World War as a reason for further European integration. Professor Prodi cautioned against the lack of awareness and memory of the war among the young generation of Europeans. Young people today perceived the European Union simply as an instrument to improve their economic well-being, and had largely forgotten what a fundamental role the Union played in creating the longest period of peace in Western European history. 

Professor Prodi touched upon many more topics over the course of his lecture and continued to share his insights and thoughtful remarks during the subsequent lunch with Yenching Academy's Associate Dean John Holden and a number of Yenching Scholars, who were given the opportunity to attend. He further addressed a number of topics, such as the refugee crisis, American interventionism and European foreign policy around the Mediterranean and in Eastern Europe, as well as the prospering relationship between Europe and China. Time and again, he understood to illustrate historical, economical and political subjects using rich and personal anecdotes. Professor Prodi's immense first-hand experience, his academic and practical understanding of Europe, and also his charming manner and intellectual awareness, left a lasting impression on the attendees. At one point during his lecture, he described Europe as an “economic giant, but a political dwarf”. It is safe to say that with his life's work for Europe, Romano Prodi is nothing less than a giant of European politics. Welcoming him at the Yenching Academy was a truly inspiring experience. 

yenching twitter magazine
yale: china hands magazine - 25 under 25 in 2016

2017 China Entrepreneur Club Annual General Meeting

Source: China Entrepreneur Club　|　Date: 17-05-10 　

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On April 24th, the China Entrepreneur Club (CEC) membership gathered in Kaifeng, Henan for the CEC's annual general meeting. Each April, the annual meeting creates opportunity for members to reflect on the past year, and discuss goals for the organization and membership going forward.

CEC Chairman Jack Ma (Executive Chairman, Alibaba Group) elaborated on the core mission of the CEC as the organization enters its second decade.

1. Contribute to economic and business related policy development

2. Participate in international affairs promoting economic progress

3. Promote continuous learning, management and responsibility among entrepreneurs

Approved by the CEC membership, the Chairman formally announced members of the CEC executive board, including: Ma Weihua (President, China Entrepreneur Club, Former President China Merchants Bank), Liu Yonghao (Chairman, New Hope Group), Guo Guangchang (Chairman, Fosun Group), Liu Donghua (Founder and Chief Guideline Officer, Zhisland), Wang Yusuo (Chairman, ENN Group), and Xu Jinghong (Chairman of the Board, Tsinghua Holdings). Additionally, Maggie Cheng (Secretary General, China Entrepreneur Club) was formerly inducted as the newest CEC member.

The current 59 members of the China Entrepreneur Club represent almost 4 trillion RMB in annual revenues and 2 million total employees.

Chairman Ma emphasized the imperative need for Chinese entrepreneurs to take on greater responsibilities: "Chinese entrepreneurs have taken on tremendous economic and social development responsibility, which we see as an honor and lifelong mission. Now, Chinese entrepreneurs need to contribute more substantially in global economic development.”

Ma continued, "The China Entrepreneur Club should represent constructive contribution towards economic development, utilizing collective entrepreneur insight and expertise as reference for macro level economic policy making. We hope to be a national macroeconomic policy formation resource, with entrepreneurs contributing to future economic policy formation and fulfilling a mission bolstering social progress and health."

xi-trump

trump tremendous meeting - mrs trump wears red symbolising joy with china; grand-daughter diplomacy- sings in chinese as part of meetings entertianment -report CGTV 5am 4/8 US-East

Outstanding Friendship  supercity Baltimore-Washington DC bureau 240 316 8157Top stories  Trump Hails 'Friendship' With China's Xi on First Day of Summit ... Bloomberg;; Trump lauds 'outstanding' relationship with Chinese ... - Marketplace;;;;Trump lauds 'outstanding' relationship with Chinese leader

Trump: China's Xi Jinping and I Have 'Developed Friendship' | Fortune ...

www.xi-trump.com 

rough notes - CGTV yang rui interview zhu min -who taught a both john  hopkins and fudan uni ... before becoming deputy managing director of imf until july 2016 -now chairman national institute for financial research at tsinghua university

at imf: lot of work low income nations

for last 6 yerars china bigest powerhouse for world growth including 50% growth 2009 - will this continue -likely to be at lweast third of grwith (note however world is in low growth environment of 3.1%)

-so main drive force for world growth
-expecta griowth lof china at 6.5% - structural shift to service consumption - key ossue quality of growth improves- whole economy more balanced

need to focus on real economy - capital economy is very high risk and should not be main china route

we need to focus on innovation , knowledeg ased manufafturing

coming meeting trump and jinping - issues that need solving

trade tension: this is key relationship (600 bn $ trade?) -impriving productivity sectors important for both sides - if 2 sides can find mutial intersts that will be good enws for whole world-

service scetor 70 to 80% of usa - cant expect usa will go less than this (didnt move at all during obama era)

isnt the issue the saizeable midde]le calss us needs

-resilece of chiense growth: we need to compenaste coming losers of our economy giving them compenastion in education and safety net eg in health

-the multinational institute can play an important role in stabilising economies (not bilateral)- bring more emerging market experience into international institutes at imf- need to focus on supply side policy

next few months critical for sin-us relations- xi jinping did fantastic job at davos welcoming cooperation with all nations

(kissinger co-evolution lof ghe 2 big economies is needed)

Book Review - On China - By Henry Kissinger - The New York ...

www.nytimes.com/.../book-review-on-china-by-henry-kissinger.html

May 13, 2011 · Henry Kissinger was not only the first official American emissary to Communist China, he persisted in his brokerage with more than 50 trips over four ...

Kissinger's Vision of US-China "Coevolution" | HELEN H WANG

thehelenwang.com/2016/06/can-east-and-west-coevolve

I just finished reading Henry Kissinger’s book On China, ... to the United States, China is a country of comparable size with extraordinary economic achievements ...

Henry Kissinger on US-China relations

china.cgtnamerica.com/2015/09/16/henry-kissinger-talks-with-cctv...

Henry Kissinger talks with CCTV about US-China relations. ... Wang Guan: In your book On China, you coined the word “co-evolution” (Kissinger: right.) .....

Kissinger Institute on China and the United States ...

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/kissinger-institute-china-and...

The mission of Kissinger Institute on China and the United States is to ... on China and the United States. Kissinger ... Kissinger Institute on China and ...

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/collection/the-month-us-china-relations-newsletter

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While the Chinese media hailed Tillerson’s “acceptance” of the Chinese formulation—which the Obama administration backed away from—many U.S. outlets found it jarring, Did Tillerson Fall Into a Chinese Diplomatic Trap? Others, such as Kissinger Institute Director, Robert Daly were less alarmist, arguing in Foreign Policy that “it’s unlikely to signal a policy shift.”

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