Successful start to China Week 2020

Up to 55 connections (some connections with more than one participant) were already present online at the official opening, which was moderated by VPS Prof. Dr. Alfons Esderts. Among the participants were not only professors and students from TU Clausthal, but also well-known representatives from all over Germany. At the beginning, Prof. Dr. Schachtner, President of Clausthal University of Technology, welcomed the participants and was pleased that the event could be held in the form of a virtual conference at short notice in view of the steadily increasing number of infections. According to Prof. Dr. Schachtner, events such as China Week "offer us all the opportunity to broaden our view of our own and our counterpart's culture and, in particular, our view of China's economic and scientific policy and to enter into a constructive dialog". The State Secretary from the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, Dr. Johannsen, and the Mayor of the mining and university town of Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Ms. Schweigel, could only agree with this, in which both expressed the view that only those who know their counterparts can fill international cooperation with life. Clausthal University of Technology has succeeded in doing this in a particularly commendable way in recent years, whereby, in addition to cooperations to promote studies, teaching and research, a special function is attributed to China competence - not least through the establishment of one of the few China competence centers in Germany.

This was followed by the first substantive presentation by Consul General DU of the People's Republic of China in Hamburg, in which China's 14th five-year plan, valid from 2021, was first briefly explained and then the prospects for future cooperation were very vividly outlined, but also the necessary relevance of mutual (even better) understanding was emphasized. Prof. Dr. Hanschke, China Representative of the MWK Lower Saxony, gave concrete details of this potential for cooperation in his presentation on Lower Saxony-Chinese university cooperation. By establishing a joint alliance for science and culture, a "huge package" is being created, whereby existing initiatives are to be supplemented and expanded by new partners. In the future, he considers the establishment of a graduate college to be desirable, whereby more contacts between medium-sized companies and students and doctoral candidates should also be established.

Prof. Dr. Riegraf, President of Paderborn University, drew a positive balance of 20 years of successful Chinese-German cooperation, whose figures on incoming and outgoing students in the field of economics also impressed Prof. Dr. Esderts. However, according to Riegraf, all of this takes time and will not happen overnight.

This was followed by a presentation by Prof. Dr. Yu, Chair of Agricultural Economics in Developing and Transition Countries at the University of Göttingen, which dealt with the changes, opportunities and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and was followed by a stimulating discussion. The following contribution by Prof. Dr. Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer, Director of the China Centre Tübingen (CCT), also sees neither a strong nor a weak China at present and emphasizes that Europe and China do not (yet) have a "common center", but are only held together by ideas and concepts of order and participation as well as a coexistence of autonomy and heteronomy. He therefore believes it is particularly worthwhile to search for a common future. Finally, Prof. Dr. Weiqi Zhang, Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Psychiatry at the University of Münster, describes the cultural-psychological explanations for people's behavior during the coronavirus pandemic. He refers to the experience of dealing with pandemics in China (SARS) and Africa (Ebola). According to him, it is above all the previous experience in dealing with pandemics that, unlike in Europe or the USA, does not make the population doubt government measures and is currently ensuring that there are hardly any further infections in the so-called 2nd wave.

Although the contributions and perspectives on Sino-German cooperation against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic differ, the core message is always similar: we can and should learn from each other even more than before. An indispensable element of this is appropriate China expertise, as China will continue to be an important partner for Germany in the future, perhaps even more so than ever before.

All in all, a very successful and varied start to Digital China Week 2020!