Description

In the fall of 2013, China’s President Xi Jinping proposed a global effort known as “One-Belt-One-Road” (OBOR). Unlike many other Chinese proposals currently on the table such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) which has multi-national economic development as underpinning, the implication and potential impact of OBOR appears to be deeper and broader. Roughly speaking, the upstream of OBOR is what President Xi refers to as CULTURAL COMMUNICATION (文化相通). It is an initiative to culturally (and economically as a spin-off) revitalize the Ancient Silk Routes (ASR), be they land-based or maritime-based. However, unlike ASR, OBOR’s success places unprecedented demand on China to profoundly understand other cultures and civilizations. For the maritime OBOR, India, being next door to China, geographically situated in South Asia, and with 1.2 billion people, is an unavoidable challenge. If OBOR is successful, measured not by years but decades and maybe centuries, it could initiate a neo-Renaissance to allow humanity to meet unprecedented challenges.

Da Hsuan Feng received his physics BA from Drew University (1968) and his PhD the University of Minnesota (1972). He joined Drexel University in 1976, where in 1990 he became M. Russell Wehr Chair Professor. In 1996, Feng became a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has been named an honorary professor at fifteen Chinese universities. He was a consultant for three National Laboratories in the United States: Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Brookhaven, and has served on a number of academic advisory boards and university Boards of Trustees throughout Asia. In 2000, Feng became Vice President for Research and Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Dallas. From 2007 to 2014, he brought significant change to Taiwan as Senior Executive Vice President of National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) and National Tsing Hua University (NTHU). Since 2007, Feng has lectured widely throughout Asia on challenges of higher education. In 2014, he assumed his current position at the University of Macau. In the past year has lectured extensively on One-Belt-One-Road in Singapore, Malaysia, Mainland China, and Taiwan.

Diana Fu is an assistant professor of Asian Politics.  Her research examines the relationship between popular contention, state power, and civil society, with an emphasis on contemporary China.  Her book manuscript, “Mobilizing Without the Masses in China” examines state control and civil society contention under authoritarian rule.  Based on two years of ethnographic research that tracks the development of informal labor organizations, the book explores counterintuitive dynamics of organized contention in post-1989 China. Articles that are part of this broader project have appeared in Governance (Forthcoming), Comparative Political Studies (2016) and Modern China (2009) among others.  Her research has been supported by the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation, the Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation, and the Rhodes Trust, Prior to joining the department, she was a Walter H. Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and a Predoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Political Science.   She holds a D.Phil. In Politics and an M.Phil. In Development Studies with distinction from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. 

Yong Wang is Professor at School of International Studies, and the Director of the Center for International Political Economy, Peking University. He is also Professor at Party School of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, and Former Visiting Chevalier Chair Professor at Institute of Asian Research(IAR), University of British Columbia(UBC). Member of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Agenda Council on Global Trade and FDI, Asia Society Regional Trade Architecture Commission and Economic Diplomacy Expert Working Group of China Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM). He has published numerous books and articles focusing on the topics of Chinese political economy, foreign policy, China-US relations, regional cooperation, international political economy, World Trade Organization (WTO) and global governance. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Global Asia, the Journal of Global Governance, the journal of Contemporary Politics and the Journal of Human Security. His recent article on political economy of One Belt One Road is published by UK-based journal of Pacific Review.