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CHERN members have been very active this spring and we want to keep you updated on our activities on a more regular basis, especially since our newsletter is going away for the summer. We will therefore occasionally be sending you invitations, calls and opportunities, in addition to the CHERN newsletter to which you subscribed. We hope that CHERN news is useful for you and that you agree with this expanded option, but if not, feel free to unsubscribe anytime. |
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Welcome to this last CHERN newsletter before the summer! In it, we are looking back and looking ahead to various exciting online events organized by our members. We learned a lot in the past year about remote networking, which you can see in the many event pages on our website and our brand-new Youtube channel. We are of course looking forward to continue this after the pandemic, but we are, perhaps even more, looking forward to meet each other in real life again. Hoping this will be possible after the summer, we are happy to share some of our plans for the autumn. WG 1 is preparing a physical meeting to close off the series on ‘Infrastructure Connectivity in Europe with Chinese characteristics’. WG 2 is following the first part of the 'Digital Power Europe’ workshop (a series of public webinars in June, with both academic contributions and EC committee members, announced below) with a second part – a closed-door physical workshop in Brussels in September, open to active contributors. WG 3 will host a paper workshop, and WG 4 will have a workshop meeting in Berlin on the role and space of European scholars in the escalating China discourse. And last but not least, WG 1, 4 and 5 are planning a joint workshop. Calls for participation and invitations will follow soon! On top of this, the CHERN Online Series will continue. In the meantime, for the young scholars in our community in particular, please check out our new calls for funding opportunities - CHERN's Short Term Scientific Mission and Inclusiveness Target Country Conference Grants!
Finally, for all our MC members we would like to announce that we are planning an online MC meeting. Given the uncertainties around travel restrictions and health risks we find it irresponsible and infeasible to organize a meeting of such a scale in physical form. The planned date is 11 October 2021, 15-18 CET, and official invitations will follow soon.
We would like to thank all CHERN members for their input and active contributions making our network such a vibrant and diverse community of China in Europe scholarly exchange in what has been an extra-ordinary pandemic year. This bodes very well for our CHERN future!
Dr Nana de Graaff
CHERN Chair
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Adapting to the new way of meeting and enhancing ideas during the global pandemic, in January 2021 CHERN launched its Online Series.
After a successful 1st cycle, on March 18th, the CHERN Online Series started its 2nd cycle of events with a lecture by Prof. Zha Daojiong, Professor in the School of International Studies and Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development, Peking University, entitled Nontraditional Security in China-Europe Relations. The recording of the lecture is available on the event page. The 2nd China-Europe research highlights in our Online Series was Foreign Investments and Security: A Nordic perspective on China’s rise, discussing Chinese Investments in Northern Europe in a presentation of the COINS (Consequences of Foreign Investments for National Security) project. Morten S. Andersen, Hege Medin and Ulf Sverdrup, all from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), presented some early results from their research projects. The recording of the event is available on our website.
The 2nd cycle concluded with another CHERN research and communication skills workshop – How to do surveys studying public opinion attitudes towards China. The workshop was held by Richard Q. Turcsányi (Palacky University Olomouc), head of the team in charge of conducting public opinion surveys in 13 European countries as part of the Sinophone Borderlands project.
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Our Online Series continues:
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Dr Janka Oertel: "Climate superpowers – How the EU and China can compete and cooperate for a green future"
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On May 20th, the CHERN Online Series started its 3rd cycle of events with a lecture by Dr Janka Oertel, Director of the Asia Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, followed by a discussion and Q&A. A recording of the lecture is available on the link below.
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"Careful or Careless? Central and Eastern Europe’s position on China and 5G"
The 3rd Research Highlights event in our Online Series is a presentation by Dr Ivana Karaskova, Founder and Leader of MapInfluenCE and China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe (CHOICE) projects and an in-house China Research Fellow at the Association for International Affairs (AMO) in Prague, Czech Republic.
June 10 2021, 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm CET
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Call for Short term scientific missions
Are you a young scholar doing research related to China-in-Europe? And would you like to learn from and work with an expert in your field? Check out CHERN's Short Term Scientific Mission opportunities!
Deadline for applications: June 5th
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Call for ITC Grants
To foster the career development of junior scholars from less research-intensive countries, a call for applications for Inclusiveness Target Country Conference Grants has been launched. The grants are intended to support researchers’ participation in conferences, including virtual conference fees.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
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Working Group Activities
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"Infrastructure Connectivity in Europe with Chinese characteristics"
Working Group 1 (Strategic sectors and infrastructure development) is organizing a series of events titled “Infrastructure Connectivity in Europe with Chinese characteristics” with online panels/workshops on urban connectivity issues such as energy, transportation, and (digital) communications.
The first event took place on April 19th and was focused on energy and climate issues, with three presentations covering various aspects of this issue, in various countries/regions of Europe. All three presenters - Alexandr Svetlicinii, Tiago Carvalho, and Aleksandar Matković - are members of WG1. You can find the recording of the presentations on the event page (to see the timestamps for each presenter, see the description of the video on our YouTube channel).
The second event took place on May 26th and focused on transportation, with presentations from WG1 members Maximilian Rech, Agnes Szunomar and Francesca Ghiretti. The recording of the presentations will be available soon on the event page.
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Webinars on China’s digital power and its implications
Working Group 2 (High-technology and innovation) continues to hold its monthly webinar series. The activities focus on China’s digital power and its implications for the EU, foreign direct investment and green innovation as well as methodological issues around new technologies such as AI. In April, Sanne van der Lugt (Leiden Asia Centre) presented her research - Chinese smart devices in the office? The case of cleaning robots. In May, there is a webinar about China’s dominance of critical raw materials for high technology by John Seaman (IFRI, Paris). In June, Maaike Okano-Heijmans (Clingendael, The Hague) will present her research about secure and open digital connectivity. If you are interested in joining the webinar series, please send an email to tim.ruhlig@ui.se!
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“Beyond ports, roads, railways: Chinese statecraft, the Belt and Road Initiative and the politics of financial infrastructures”
On April 28th Working Group 3 (Financial investments, real estate and services) hosted a talk by Johannes Petry (SCRIPTS Cluster of Excellence, Berlin). Johannes presented his ground-breaking research on how Chinese state-owned firms are building financial infrastructures in Belt and Road countries, in particular via the (partial) acquisition of national stock exchanges. He argues that these moves should be seen as forms of financial statecraft, enabling investment into BRI projects, bringing Chinese capital into local markets and shaping new rules and norms of investment, with major implications for the existing global economic order. You can read more about the speaker and watch a recording of the lecture on the event page.
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Podast on uneven and combined (state) capitalism
Following their talk in March, Nick Jepson, leader of CHERN's Working Group 3 (Financial investments, real estate and services), interviewed Ilias Alami and Adam Dixon about their work on uneven and combined (state) capitalism. You can listen to the podcast via the event page or here.
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“Chinese migration in Europe” – publication in more than 10 languages
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Following the Working Group 5 (Labour and Migration) workshop “Interethnic relations: Chinese migrants and their European host societies” in October 2020, several presenters were invited to contribute to a special symposium within Global Dialogue, a digital magazine of the International Sociological Association. The articles which were originally published in English are now available in Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian and many more languages. Read about the changing place of the Chinese across Europe in your prefered language following the links here!
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Recent publications by CHERN members
Brennan, L. (2021). China’s big challenge is to harness education success, Financial Times, May 07. Chan, CK., Florence, E., and Qiu, J.L. (Eds.). (2021). Agency Beyond Precarity: Platforms and the multiplication of labor regimes in China, China Perspectives, 2021/1. Chan, CK., Florence, E., and Qiu, J.L. (2021). Precarity, Platforms, and Agency: The Multiplication of Chinese Labour, in Agency Beyond Precarity: Platforms and the multiplication of labor regimes in China, China Perspectives, 2021/1. Fresnoza-Flot, A. and Wang, S. (2021) Asia-Europe intimate links: Family migrants, binational couples and mixed-parentage children. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 30 (1). Kaufmann, L. (2021). Rural-Urban Migration and Agro-Technological Change in Post-Reform China. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Landini, F., Lema, R., and Malerba, F. (2020). Demand-led catch-up: a history-friendly model of latecomer development in the global green economy. Industrial and Corporate Change, 29(5), 1297–1318. Lema, R., Fu, X., and Rabellotti, R. (2020). Green windows of opportunity: latecomer development in the age of transformation toward sustainability. Industrial and Corporate Change, 29(5), 1193–1209. Liu, I. and Dixon, A. (2020). SWFs in-depth: The great experiment. China Investment Corporation in Europe and beyond. In: China Investment Corporation in the Sovereign Wealth Funds Report 2020.
Marjanović, D., Jovičić, E., and Stojanović, D. (2021). The global distribution of Chinese Investments - importance for the economy of Serbia. Ekonomika, Vol. 67, No. 1, pp. 43-55. Peragovics, T. and Szunomár, Á. (2021). China in the Western Balkans: geopolitics with Chinese characteristics? In: Varga, G; Molnár, T L (szerk.) Western Balkans Playbook: Competition for Influence of Foreign Actors, Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade, pp. 139-166. Rogelja, I. (2020). Concrete and coal: China's infrastructural assemblages in the Balkans. Political Geography, 81. Santiago, A. (2021). "Guan Xi" as a Tool of Local Governance: How Is It Faring in a Contemporary Chinese Context?. Journal of Communication Studies (Common Ground Studies), 6: 3. Wang, S. (2021). Chinese Migrants in Paris. The Narratives of Illusion and Suffering. Leiden: Brill.
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Activities by CHERN members
In this new section, we will publish information about activities organized by CHERN members - please send all relevant announcements to your WG leaders for the next newsletter which will be published in the autumn
Anabela Santiago, WG1 member, is co-organizing with the New Silk Road Friends Association and the Aveiro University the Organization of Health and Wellbeing New Silk Road Conference. The conference is held on May 27th from 9AM till 6PM (Lisbon time) at the Rectory Building of the University of Aveiro and on the Zoom Colibri Platform. More information about the event can be found here.
Cong-rui Qiao, WG2 member, is organizing the summer school “Law and Governance in China”. It will take place this July (hybrid form of on-campus and online). The summer school is open to students, PhD candidates and professionals with an interest in law and governance in contemporary China. More information can be found here.
Haiyan Zhang, WG2 member, organized the online event "EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI): What’s in it for Europe and China and the road ahead". More information can be found here.
Jeffrey Henderson and Nana de Graaff, CHERN Vice Chair and Chair, will organize a panel at the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) on July 5, with several other CHERN members (e.g. Nicholas Jepson and Adam Dixon) presenting contributions to the first CHERN Special Issue: "The Wind from the East. China and the Future of Europe", which will be published in Development and Change.
Jelena Gledić, CHERN Science communication manager, is co-organizing with Marijk van der Wende the summer school “Internationalisation Challenged – Rethinking Global Higher Education”. This hybrid program is scheduled for August and is open for graduate students, postdocs and young professionals from China, Europe, and beyond. The focus of the Summer School is on how changing geopolitics are affecting international academic cooperation and how higher education contributes to generating knowledge essential to educate new generations for a global future. More information can be found here.
Nick Jepson, WG 4 leader, gave a talk about China and the future of global financial governance at the University of Warwick's East Asia Study Group on May 19th.
Lena Kaufmann, WG 5 member, will give a presentation on the findings from her current research on digital infrastructures during the conference Conceptualizing the “Belt and Road Initiative” and its Effects, June 14-15, University of Toronto (held online). Her paper is entitled China’s Digital Silk Road to Europe: On-the-ground perspectives from Switzerland.
Lena Kaufmann, WG 5 member, is deputy chair of the China(s) Regional Group of the German Anthropological Association (GAA) which just launched a new website. The group is organizing a workshop entitled "Seismic China – Environmental Shifts and Radical Reorientations in China-World Relationships“ during the upcoming DGSKA/GAA conference in Bremen (September 27-30).
Roberta Rablotti and Ramus Lema, WG 2 members, held a lecture entitled “Green Windows of Opportunity: Chinese Catch up in the Age of Transformation Towards Sustainability”. The lecture can be viewed here.
Simeng Wang and Thais França, WG 5 members, are convening a panel on Chinese migrants’ experiences in a pandemic Europe at the 18th IMISCOE Annual Conference, July 7-9. CHERN members Antonella Ceccagno, Sofia Gaspar, and Maggi Leung are among the participants. The panel intends to discuss the experience of Chinese migrants during the pandemic in different European contexts, looking at the main obstacles they have faced, their coping strategies as well as future mobility paths.
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