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Organised by East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore and Sponsored by Professor Saw Swee Hock

Topic:

Professor Peter Nolan
Director of the China Centre, Jesus College and Chong Hua Professor in Chinese Development (Emeritus), University of Cambridge, UK

Speaker:

Professor Xing Yuqing
Professor of Economics, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan

Date:

Tuesday, 5 December 2017, 4:30pm-6:00pm

Venue:

EAI Conference Room
NUS Bukit Timah Campus
469A Bukit Timah Road
Tower Block #06-01
Singapore 259770

Abstract:

Human civilisation stands at a crossroads. There are urgent global challenges that need to be confronted, including destruction of the natural environment; climate change; inequality of income; wealth and life chances; industrial concentration and regulation of the financial system. Looming above all these is the issue of how to avoid a ‘Clash of Civilisations’ and a New Peloponnesian War. Only by looking deep into the past can one better understand the possible direction that the long-term evolution of world civilisation might take. The relationship between China and the West will play a central role in the path that humanity follows in the decades and centuries ahead. For around 2,000 years in the Ancient World the evolution of civilisation in both China and the West followed converging paths. From the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fourth century AD till the early 19th century their paths diverged radically. In this era China continued to build in an evolutionary fashion on the foundations laid in the Ancient world while Europe followed a fundamentally different course from that which had been established in the Ancient world. The long era of the ‘first divergence’ left a deep imprint on the culture of both the East and the West. The Industrial Revolution in Britain signalled the start of a second era of radical divergence, which lasted up till the late 20th century. In the long sweep of world history this era was of a short duration, a mere 200 years, compared with the more than 4,000 years of complex civilisation that preceded it. Since the 1980s the world has entered an era of renewed economic convergence between China and the West. However, there are still deep differences in the respective civilisations, which are inherited from the long sweep of history. These differences have the potential to result in conflict, producing global instability and violence; however, they also have the potential to combine in a virtuous fashion that helps to construct a sustainable and peaceful global future for the whole of humanity.

About the Speaker:

Professor Peter Nolan has written numerous books, including Inequality: India and China Compared (1976) (with T J Byres); Growth Processes and Distributional Change (1983); The Political Economy of Collective Farms (1987); State and Market in the Chinese Economy (1993); China’s Rise, Russia’s Fall (1995); Indigenous Large Firms in China’s Economic Reform (1998); Coca-Cola and the Global Business Revolution(1999); China and the Global Economy (2001); China and the Global Business Revolution (2001); Transforming China (2004); China at the Crossroads (2004); Global Business Revolution and the Cascade Effect (2007) (with Chunhang Liu and Jin Zhang); Integrating China (2007); Capitalism and Freedom (2007); Crossroads (2009); Is China Buying the World? (2012); Chinese Firms, Global Firms: Industrial Policy in the Age of Globalization (2013); Re-balancing China: Essays on the Global Financial Crisis, Industrial Policy and International Relations (2015); and Understanding China: The Silk Road and the Communist Manifesto(2015). He has testified at the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission of the US Congress and lectured to the Board of the US-China Business Council and the Group of Thirty (G30). He holds an honorary doctorate from the Copenhagen Business School. In 2009 he was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) by the UK government. He has spoken at the China Development Forum since its inception in 2000.

Note: Registration is required for this Goh Keng Swee Lecture on Modern China. To register, please email [Name of attendee; Email address; Organisation and Contact Number(s)] to eaireg@nus.edu.sg or fax to 67793409. Admission is free. Please register early as seats are available on a first-come-first-served basis. All registrations are confirmed unless otherwise notified. For enquiries, please contact the EAI at 65163715. Click here for the pdf format of this flyer.