My participation in the 2024 CHERN Training School “Making results count: Translating independent China research into actionable recommendations” deserves a broader contextualisation. Prior to arriving near the SKEMAPOLIS headquarters in Suresnes where the Training School took place, the public transport connection from the Charle de Gaulle Airport offered a convenient option to visit the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (CIUP) campus. This was a timely occasion to take a quick stroll around the historic core site of this area, which was initially designed to support a peaceful future for the world (referred to in French as “école des relations humaines pour la paix”) after the war.
The year 2024 is notable for this renowned campus. Some of the most colossal (or voraciously referred to in French by Le Monde as pharaonique) buildings emerge as the new defining elements of the campus landscape. Among them is the China House. The major modernisation plans, referred to as Cité 2025, were launched to adjust CIUP to contemporary student necessities and environmental standards. However, the sheer size and accommodation space of the China House have evoked references by Figaro to this building as representing a “new diplomatic bastion” for China. Thus, the meaning of Cité 2025 elements surpasses the mere modernisation of student housing facilities. The CIUP’s China House can be taken as an emblematic example of China-in-Europe contemporary dynamics, including the increasingly prominent Chinese footprint in some of the most emblematic sites across Europe. Such a physical presence with one of the biggest new architectural elements in a very symbolic place for international higher education and research relations embodies a more refined and materially imposing positionality than some intellectual tides brought to Paris by, for example, the geographically distant Suzhou campus of the SKEMA Business School.
Moving on to the actual programme of the CHERN Training School, ties between academia and innovation were a prominent element of the overall debates on the collective attempt to respond to one of CHERN’s main aims. The corresponding CHERN aim is to generate a more nuanced and overarching conception of China’s growing European engagements and to address and debate the policy implications of these developments with relevant agencies from the EU, Member states, business, trade unions and other interested parties and generate relevant input for those stakeholders.
One of the CHERN Training School’s group discussions generated an approach to the existing academic ties and how key individuals engaged in these interactions could help improve the overall awareness among the EU policy staff responsible for China portfolios concerning various implications of these engagements or restrictions on such links. The current capacities and specialisation of respective academic sectors were among the notable considerations because, as confirmed by Quacquarelli Symonds (among many others), today China hosts globally excelling departments with outstanding experience and expertise. Potential pathways for future cooperation should build on the expertise of recent research and teaching staff experiences to successfully navigate the current three-dimensional EU stance towards China as a partner for cooperation, an economic competitor, and a systemic rival.
Even more importantly, thanks to the active engagement among participants, the Training School resulted in a comprehensive overview concerning the current EU-China research agenda. A considerable share of EU-China relations is built on the analytical insights developed by academics, researchers specialising in more applied sciences and topics, and a wide spectrum of analysts. These epistemic considerations set an influential tone and are part of the overall EU-China geopolitical ‘atmospherics’. The most prominent angles of EU-China relations were mirrored by the policymakers’ summaries and pitches created in the group projects, as well as the individual or institutional research projects pursued by each attendant and speaker of the School.
The timing of the School was excellent to promote the sustainability of CHERN’s results and resonance. The Training School took place roughly one month before the end of the COST Action. Such planning of the School’s implementation increased the overall CHERN impact, and gave additional impetus for further research. While the effect of this remains to be seen in the weeks and months to come, even without this full picture at hand, the organisation of the concluding CHERN Training School at the end of the COST Action deserves an appraisal as a good practice for other EU-funded consortiums to take into full consideration when designing their project activities and outreach events. The intellectual reflection process incentivised by the Training School does not conclude with the policy pitch and closing remarks. As this blog post clearly shows, firstly, the chosen geographic location of the School brings a richer contextualisation, as it was hosted in a city with a strong and deeply rooted academic tradition and dense higher education infrastructure. Secondly, various ideas that were exchanged and suggestions that were modelled during the event experience a unique and much longer evolutionary curve than the COST Action itself. Forthcoming publications by the conveners, speakers and participants of the School might be good sources for further information on the exact modalities of this prolonged generative process.
