Foreign Correspondents' Club of China

FCCC Happy Hour
2023-04-27 18:30 - 23:00 (Asia/Shanghai) | Confidential Bar, 朝阳区苹果社区二十二院街艺术区32号院, Beijing, Beijing, 100027, China
This Thursday we have club drinks at Confidential Bar from 1830. As always all colleagues and friends welcome. If you haven’t come before (or been for a while) then please do join. Look forward to seeing you all there!

FCCC In-person Talk: Andrew Batson, China Research Director at Gavekal Dragonomics China’s economy after Covid: On the road to recovery?
2023-05-03 16:00 - 17:30 | Embassy of Australia, Dongzhimenwai Street, Beijing, China
China’s economy grew by 4,5 % during the first quarter of the year, stronger than most analysts had expected. The recovery was mainly driven by private consumption and an expansion of the service sector. But a closer look at the data reveals that a stable recovery of the Chinese economy is far from certain. Investment and production are still relatively weak and youth unemployment climbed to 19,6 % in March, which is an indicator of a still struggling private sector. Private enterprises account for roughly 80 % of urban employment.
Andrew Batson will give us a deeper insight into China’s political economy and help us understand the dynamics of the Chinese economy in 2023.
About the speaker: Andrew Batson is China Research Director at Gavekal Dragonomics. Andrew has worked extensively on the Chinese economy. Before joining Gavekal Dragonomics he worked as a reporter in Beijing and once served on the board of the FCCC.

FCCC Online Talk: How Chinese Citizens Currently View the World and its Implications for Global Actors by Reza Hasmath
2023-05-17 15:00 - 16:30 | Google Meet
This talk provides a candid account of how the Chinese citizenry currently thinks about other nations, and their relationship with China. It draws upon findings from the first iteration of the Chinese Citizens’ Global Perception Survey (CCGPS) conducted by the speaker in the first quarter of 2023. CCGPS 2023 is a national, representative survey looking at mainland Chinese citizens’ perspectives on China’s current relations with global actors, including, Australia, Canada, EU, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, UK and USA. The talk will focus on discussing the major findings, and potential policy implications, pertaining to Chinese citizens’ (1) general global perception (e.g. trust in global partners, perceived importance of global relationships, likelihood of future military conflict); (2) views on China’s global roles and engagement (e.g. economic cooperation, technological/research partnerships); (3) preferences for foreign tourism, study, work and emigration; and, (4) knowledge of global jurisdictions, and sources of information about global affairs. Suffice it to say, how Chinese citizens perceive the world will have profound implications for China’s future domestic and international behaviour, as well as for the global actors that intimately engage with China.
About the Speaker: Reza Hasmath (Ph.D., Cambridge) is a Full Professor in Political Science at the University of Alberta. He has previously held faculty positions at the Universities of Toronto, Melbourne and Oxford, and has worked for think-tanks, consultancies, development agencies, and NGOs in USA, Canada, Australia, UK and China. His award-winning research examines how the behaviour of emerging Chinese state and non-state actors potentially affect salient theories, practices and assumptions in international affairs.

FCCC In-person Event: Looking back on three decades of doing business in China by Jörg Wuttke
2023-05-22 17:30 - 19:00 | Germany Embassy in Beijing, 17 Dongzhimen Outer Street/东直门外大街17号, Beijing, beijing, 100027, China
Jörg Wuttke has been one of the most outspoken voices of the European business community in China. When it came to deficits and shortcomings of the investment climate in China he seldom minced his words. “Level playing field” and “equal treatment of local and foreign companies” became some of his most widely used terms. During the pandemic Jörg became one of the fiercest critics of the Zero-Covid policy. And his words rarely fell on deaf ears with the Chinese authorities. Government officials would listen to him and always treated him with respect. In his position Jörg also became an important mediator between the European business community in China and EU institutions in Brussels. After three stints as President of the EUCCC Jörg will step down on May 24th. After three decades of living and working in China he will leave the country in 2024.
During the talk Jörg will look back on highs as well as on lows during his stay in China and will give his personal outlook for the economy of China, where business for foreign companies has seldom been as difficult as it is today.
About the speaker: Jörg Wuttke is President of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, an office he has held already from 2007 to 2010, and 2014 to 2017 and again since May 2019. From 2001 to 2004 Mr. Wuttke was the Chairman of the German Chamber of Commerce in China. Since its establishment in 2013, Mr. Wuttke is member of the Advisory Board of Germany’s foremost Think Tank on China, Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), in Berlin. He lived in China for more than 30 years.

Annual General Meeting 2023
2023-05-24 18:00 - 20:00 | Embassy near Sanlitun, Beijing, China
Our Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be May 24 at 6:00 PM at an embassy in the Dongzhimen area. This is our most important meeting of the year. We will reflect on the past year and, most importantly, elect our next board. The club needs you to make this important institution work!
For correspondent members who wish to participate virtually the meeting will also be streamed online via Google Meet.
Please RSVP to attend in-person, online, or request an absentee ballot below to receive event details.

FCCC In-person Talk: How should we interpret China’s newly updated Counterespionage Law?
2023-06-01 10:00 - 23:00 | Embassy near Ritan Park, Beijing, Chaoyang, China
Yale Law School’s Jeremy Daum, will be discussing the recent revisions of Counterespionage Law in the broader context of China’s evolving national security legislation and its legal system’s increasing extraterritorial reach.
About the Speaker: Jeremy is a Senior Research Scholar in Law and Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center. His principal research focus is criminal procedure law, with a particular emphasis on the protection of vulnerable populations such as juveniles and the mentally ill in the criminal justice system. Jeremy also founded and coordinates China Law Translate, the crowdsourced project, that hosts translation and commentary on key pieces of Chinese legislation and regulation.

FCCC Online Event: New FCC China cybersecurity guide
2023-06-14 14:00 - 15:30 | Google Meet
Working as a China correspondent means dealing with a very high threat environment for digital attacks and surveillance. The Chinese government has wide-ranging capabilities, both documented and theorised, and by the nature of your job, you are a high value target.
The FCCC has put together a presentation which aims to teach you how to mitigate those threats as much as possible, and keep your data safe, updating our previous guide from 2017. This is now available on our website, click here or go to Members Area > Reporters Guide > Cyber Security Support for China Correspondents.
Please join us at 2pm on June 14 for an online discussion of the new guide, to go through it and share feedback and best practices. This discussion is limited to correspondents only for security reasons.

FCCC In-person Event: Shifting balances between China and Russia: Implication for the EU and NATO
2023-06-23 15:00 - 17:00 | Danish Embassy, Beijing, Beijing
The Danish Embassy in Beijing invites you to attend a roundtable discussion with the Royal Danish Defence College, followed by light snacks and drinks.
Dr. Camilla T. N. Sørensen and Dr. Niels Bo Poulsen will provide their assessments of evolving relations between China and Russia in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine and the growing tension between China and the U.S. focusing on the potential implications for the EU and NATO. They will further offer their analysis of ongoing developments in relations between China and the EU as well as China and NATO discussing challenges and risks.
We invite all participants to join the roundtable and share their experiences working in China and their view of China’s economic, political and military developments in recent years.
About the Speakers: Dr. Camilla T. N. Sørensen is Associate Professor at the Institute for Strategy and War Studies at the Royal Danish Defence College conducting research and teaching within international security and military strategy with a specific focus on China, East Asia and the Arctic. She has previously held positions at the Department of Political Science, Copenhagen University, and has been affiliated as a visiting researcher (2010-2014) at the School of International Studies, Peking University. Dr. Niels Bo Poulsen is Director at the Institute for Strategy and War Studies at the Royal Danish Defence College conducting research and teaching within military history and military strategy with a special focus on Russia and the former USSR. He has previously held positions at the Department of Eastern European Studies, Copenhagen University, and at the Danish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

FCCC In-person Talk: Hunting a Chinese phantom: The world’s most dangerous arms dealer
2023-06-29 16:00 - 17:30 | Embassy near Sanlitun, Beijing, China
FCCC member Christoph Giesen together with three co-authors recently published a
thrilling book about Chinese citizen Li Fangwei alias Karl Lee. Born in a small town in
Heilongjiang Li is allegedly the world’s most dangerous arms dealer, selling components and
dual use equipment to Iran among other countries. Christoph and the co-authors wrote a
fascinating story about Li’s global network and how he, through constant changes in his
company structure, manages to fool law enforcement authorities. During the talk Christoph
and one of the co-authors who will join online will talk about how they followed Li’s traces
around the world.
About our speaker: Christoph Giesen is German News magazine Der Spiegel’s China
Correspondent since 2022. Prior to that he worked for the German daily Süddeutsche
Zeitung (SZ) as correspondent in Beijing. From 2012 until 2016 Christoph was part of the
economics department in SZ’s headquarter in Munich. He was part of a team of investigative
journalists who published the Panama Papers, Lux-Leaks, Swiss Leaks and Offshore Leaks.

FCCC In-person Talk: "Empires of Ideas: the Future of Universities in China and in Hong Kong"
2023-07-05 10:00 - 11:30 | Embassy near Sanlitun, Beijing, China
Professor Kirby will give a talk to Club members based around his new book: Empires of Ideas and focused on ‘The Future of Universities in China and in Hong Kong’. He will also address in detail US-China-HK relations and the political pressures on education and business in this difficult time.
About the speaker: Professor William Kirby, is the Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University. He is a University Distinguished Service Professor. Professor Kirby serves as Chairman of the Harvard China Fund, the University’s academic venture fund for China, and Faculty Chair of the Harvard Center Shanghai, Harvard’s first University-wide center located outside the United States.

FCCC Online Event: Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology
2023-09-22 10:00 - 11:30 | Google Meet
The global battle among the three dominant digital powers—the United States, China, and the European Union—is intensifying. All three regimes are racing to regulate tech companies, with each advancing a competing vision for the digital economy while attempting to expand its sphere of influence in the digital world. Join us for a discussion with Professor Bradford on her new book, Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology, where she explores a rivalry that will shape the world in the decades to come.
About our speaker:
Anu Bradford is Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organizations at Columbia Law School. She is also a director for Columbia’s European Legal Studies Center and a Senior Scholar at Jerome A. Chazen Institute for Global Business at Columbia Business School. She is an expert on international trade law, European Union law, digital regulation, and comparative and international antitrust law. Bradford is the author of “The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World”, which was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by Foreign Affairs.

FCCC 2023 SUMMER PARTY
2023-09-23 15:00 - 20:00 | Embassy of Poland, 1 Ritan Rd, Beijing, Chaoyang Park, 100005, China
The FCCC 2023 Summer Party will be a family-friendly daytime event in the beautiful embassy garden, with entertainment for kids, delicious food, and free-flow of drinks – and this year, we’ll also have live music! A great opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and friends of the FCCC.

Early bird tickets available until September 10th
FCCC Members: 230
FCCC Guest: 280
Youth: 150
Kids: free

FCCC Online Event: Italy’s exit from the BRI by Alessia A. Amighini
2023-10-06 16:00 - 17:30 | Google Meet
In 2019, when the Italian government signed a Memorandum of Understanding to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Italy was – and still is – the only member of the G7 to do so. Four years later Italy’s Belt and Road romance is coming to an end. The current Italian government does not consider its BRI membership to have sufficiently benefitted its economy and wants to exit BRI. This talk is the best preparation for all journalists who have to cover the BRI summit in mid-October. We will talk with Italian economist Alessia A. Amighini about what Italy hoped to gain from joining BRI, why the government no longer wants to be a part of it today and what an Italian exit means for BRI.
About our speaker: Alessia A. Amighini is Co-Head of the Asia Centre and a Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), Italy’s oldest think tank. Furthermore she is a non-resident fellow at Brussels-based economic think tank Bruegel and an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Piemonte Orientale.

FCCC Online event: Belt and Road: Where are we 10 years on? by Christoph Nedopil
2023-10-17 10:00 - 11:30 | Google Meet
Next week China holds its 3rd Belt and Road Forum, celebrating the initiative’s 10th anniversary. We take this as an opportunity to have a closer look at China’s huge infrastructure project together with the economist and former FCCC member Christoph Nedopil.
About the speaker: Christoph Nedopil is the director of the Griffith Asia Institute and a Professor at Griffith University. He is also Visiting Professor and the Acting Director of the Green Finance & Development Center at Fanhai International School of Finance at Fudan University in Shanghai, as well as a Visiting Faculty at Singapore Management University. Previously, he was the Founding Director of the Green Belt and Road Initiative Center and a faculty at Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing.

FCCC Online Talk: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future
2023-10-25 19:00 - 20:30 | Google Meet
The past is a battleground in many countries, but in China it is crucial to political power. In traditional China, dynasties rewrote history to justify their rule by proving that their predecessors were unworthy of holding power. Marxism gave this a modern gloss, describing history as an unstoppable force heading toward Communism’s triumph. The Chinese Communist Party builds on these ideas to whitewash its misdeeds and glorify its rule. Join us for a talk with Ian Johnson on his new book, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, where he describes how some of China’s best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history.
About our speaker:
Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, researcher, and senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Johnson has lived in China for more than 20 years and has been following the country since first going there as a student in Beijing from 1984 to 1985. He worked as a newspaper correspondent in China from 1994 to 1996 with Baltimore’s The Sun, and from 1997 to 2001 with The Wall Street Journal. In 2009, Johnson returned to China, living there until 2020 when he was expelled as part of worsening tensions between China and the United States.

Renewal Season 2024
2023-10-30 08:00 - 2024-01-15 23:30
Thank you for being a member of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China in 2023. We very much appreciate your support and we hope your FCCC-membership has been valuable to you both socially and professionally.
Through the adversity we all face, we have continued to provide support and guidance, to share knowledge and to raise awareness of the difficult working conditions our community faces. We held speaker events (and happily some even in person again), a fabulous summer party and other social gatherings and regularly spoken up on media freedoms issues in China.
We would like to thank you for support in 2023 and to ask you to renew your support for our community in 2024. Your FCCC membership ends on December 31st, which means now is the time to renew. Unfortunately, there is every reason to believe that the coming year will also be challenging and the Club’s activities remain as important as ever – your Club needs you!
To renew please write an email to fcccadmin@gmail.com

FCCC Online Talk: What’s Next for US-China Relations? by Jude Blanchette
2023-11-01 09:00 - 10:00 | Google Meet
A talk by Jude Blanchette, who holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The talk will focus on: the upcoming Xi-Biden meeting at APEC, Taiwan relations, and then the upcoming US presidential election season and what it means for short- and near-term calculations for Washington and Beijing.
Jude was formerly with the Conference Board in Beijing, where he researched China’s political environment with a focus on the workings of the Communist Party of China and its impact on foreign companies and investors, and prior to that at UCSD’s 21st Century China Center. Jude is widely published and many of you will have listened, read or spoken to him on China in recent years. He has an M.A. in modern Chinese studies from Oxford, and a B.A. in economics from Loyola University, Maryland.

FCCC In-person Event: Uli Sigg: Swiss Art Collector, Former Diplomat and Businessman
2023-11-02 17:00 - 19:00 | Embassy of Switzerland, Sanlitun Dongwujie 3, Beijing, Beijing, 100600
Hong Kong’s M+ has become one of the most popular art museums in Asia. This wouldn’t have been possible without Uli Sigg. The Swiss art collector, former diplomat and businessman donated the bulk of his Chinese contemporary art collection to the museum. The M+ Sigg Collection includes among other artists works by Fang Lijun, Song Dong and dissident artist Ai Weiwei.
Join us for an in-person talk with Uli Sigg for an evening of discussion on how he turned from businessman to art collector, how the crackdown on free speech in Hong Kong affects the art scene, and what the future of Chinese contemporary art looks like.
Seats for this event are limited so please register in advance. The talk and Q&A will be off the record, but you will have the opportunity to connect with Uli Sigg at a small apero at the Embassy
About the speaker: Born in Lucerne, Switzerland in 1946, the lawyer and entrepreneur Uli Sigg implemented the first joint venture of a Western corporation in China for Schindler in 1980. Later he was Swiss ambassador in Beijing. Uli Sigg amassed the most important collection of contemporary Chinese art. In 2012, he donated a large part of his collection to Hong Kong’s M+. The museum, designed by star architects Herzog & de Meron, finally opened in November 2021 after four years of delay.

FCCC IN-person Event: Chinese Economy Policy in 2023 by Barry Naughton
2023-11-03 16:00 - 17:00 | Dutch Embassy, Beijing, China
The Chinese economic policymaking process has finally emerged in the last couple of months. While policymaking is more coherent and better coordinated, it still seems torn between conflicting objectives. In particular, policymakers are no longer focused on economic growth. Rather, the drive to build industrial resilience in the face of American technology challenges has led them to emphasize the creation of a ‘Modernized Industrial System.’ This emphasis—along with the on-going housing recession and potential financial risks—is likely to weigh on Chinese growth prospects for the foreseeable future.

About our speaker: Barry Naughton is one of the world’s leading experts on the Chinese economy. He specializes in China’s transitional economic policy-making, with an emphasis on issues relating to industry, trade and finance. His authoritative textbook “The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth”, has been for years a reference for students at universities around the world, including China. Naughton is the So Kwan Lok Chair of Chinese International Affairs at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego.

FCCC Online Event. On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China by Margaret Hillenbrand
2023-11-07 16:00 - 17:30 | Google Meet
On the Edge is highly interdisciplinary, fusing digital media, art history, literary criticism, and performance studies with citizenship, protest, and labor studies. It makes both the distinctive Chinese experience and the vital role of culture central to global understandings of how entrenched insecurity and civic jeopardy fray the bonds of the social contract.
Examining the volatile aesthetic forms that embody stifled social tensions and surging anxiety over zombie citizenship, Hillenbrand traces how people use culture to vent taboo feelings of rage, resentment, distrust, and disdain in scenarios rife with cross-class antagonism.

About the Speaker: Margaret Hillenbrand is a professor of modern Chinese literature and culture at the University of Oxford. Her previous books include Negative Exposures: Knowing What Not to Know in Contemporary China (2020).

FCCC Online Talk: Decoding Chinese Elite Politics by Joseph Torigian
2023-11-09 10:00 - 11:30 | Google Meet
Join us on November 9th, for Decoding Chinese Elite Politics: a talk from the renowned scholar of elite Chinese politics, Joseph Torigian. Torigian is an assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC.
In this talk, he will provide an overview of what outside observers have gotten right and wrong about Chinese elite politics and why.
Torigian studies the politics of authoritarian regimes with a specific focus on elite power struggles, civil-military relations, and grand strategy. His scholarship focuses on Russia and China and he is working on a much anticipated biography of Xi Zhongxun, father of Xi Jinping. He has pursued his research at Princeton-Harvard’s China and the World Program; Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation; George Washington University’s Institute for Security and Conflict Studies; the Higher School of Economics in Moscow as well as Fudan University. He has a PhD from MIT and BA from University of Michigan.

FCCC Online Talk: Laughter, Tea, and People to People Relations in the Age of the Internet
2023-11-21 10:00 - 11:30 | Google Meet
Jesse Appell came to China as a Fulbright scholar, apprenticing to Master Xiangsheng performer Ding Guangquan and becoming a mainstay of the Chinese comedy community. He has written and performed on Chinese comedy shows and has 2 million followers in China and almost 1 million abroad. Jesse will share some of his thoughts on the nature of comedy in China, the role of the Internet in sharing culture, and his new adventures starting one of America’s fastest-growing specialty tea companies.
About the Speaker: Jesse Appell 艾杰西 is a bilingual comedian and creator with over 3 million followers on platforms around the world. A disciple of Master Xiangsheng performer Ding Guangquan, he performs Chinese and English comedy online and live around the world. He is also the founder of Jesse’s Teahouse, an online tea shop with some of the best tea you can buy outside of China.

FCCC Happy Hour
2023-12-01 18:00 - 21:00 | School Bar, 东直门外大街乙36号院海晟名苑12号楼103室 100027, Beijing, Beijing, China
In honor of his first coming to China 20 years ago, in December 2003, former FCCC President Stephen McDonell has been made guest curator for our last monthly drinks of the year and has chosen the legendary underground music venue School Bar in Wudaoying Hutong.
Drinks start at this hive of Beijing counterculture at 6 pm, in the front bar next to the foosball table. The live bands kick off in the performance area from 9 pm.
There is no kitchen at School Bar but food can be delivered there.
Location:
53 Wudaoying Hutong
朝阳区, 五道营胡同53号
It is close to Lama Temple subway station.
离雍和宫地铁站很近。

FCCC Online Talk: Is China’s economy in crisis? Where is the world’s second-largest economy heading? By Wang Tao
2023-12-19 10:00 - 11:30 | Google Meet
News about the Chinese economy isn’t getting any better. The housing crisis is only getting
worse, consumers don’t spend as the government hoped for, and exports are still sluggish.
Furthermore, there seems to be no coherent strategy about how to solve the local
government debt problem. On December 5 th rating agency Moody’s downgraded China’s
credit from stable to negative.
Wang Tao will give an introduction to her new book “Making Sense of China’s Economy” and
help us to shed light on the economic prospects for 2024.
About our speaker: Wang Tao is one of the most respected experts on the Chinese economy. She currently
serves as managing director, chief China economist and head of Asia economic research at
UBS in Hong Kong. From 1997 to 2006 Tao worked at the IMF in Washington D.C.

FCCC Online Talk: Where to for North Korea in 2024?
2024-02-13 10:00 - 11:00 | Google Meet
North Korean experts Chad O’Carroll and Colin Zeirko will help Club members understand what to expect for the Korean Peninsula in 2024 and calibrate the various different scenarios and hypotheses that have been advanced recently about the possibility of conflict.
Chad O’Carroll is the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Korea Risk Group. He is a respected journalist and analyst with specializations in North Korea and geopolitical risk on the peninsula. In addition to his responsibilities as Chief Executive of Korea Risk Group, O’Carroll is a regular contributor to NK Pro, Korea Pro and NK News. Furthermore, he manages several Korea Risk Group consulting projects and provides regular input to a range of clients.
Colin Zwirko is Korea Risk Group’s Senior Analytic Correspondent. He leads open-source intelligence collection and analysis efforts, publishing regular analyses on a range of subjects including military/diplomatic affairs, DPRK infrastructure, and trade issues.Furthermore, he is a satellite imagery specialist and produces industry-leading material in this area.

FCCC Online Talk: The Assemblage of Social Death: Digital Vigilantism and Cancel Culture in China by Qian Huang
2024-02-21 16:00 - 17:00 | Google Meet
Online visibility has been increasingly weaponized to cause individuals’ “social death” (unrepairable damage to one’s reputation within a community/society) when perceived transgression or offense is committed. This trend is illustrated by the rising phenomenon of digital vigilantism and “cancel culture” across different cultural contexts. Focusing on Chinese empirical cases, Qian will present this topic based on her finished NWO Ph.D. project and more recent research. She will draw on various case studies to map out the dynamics among main actors/stakeholders and the public discourses about this phenomenon in China.
About the Speaker: Dr. Qian Huang is an assistant professor at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at University of Groningen. She obtained her PhD in October 2022 from Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research expertise includes digital vigilantism, creative labour, and youth digital culture. She is currently working on projects studying how cultural workers and general citizens negotiate their identities and manage their visibility in daily production practices in contemporary surveillance culture and influencer culture, especially in transnational contexts.

FCCC Happy Hour
2024-02-29 18:30 - 23:30 | Side Street at Jianguomen, Beijing, beijing, China
Our monthly club drinks are on the last Thursday of every month – a must for newbies! All colleagues and friends are welcome, regardless of membership, and happy hour is on all night.

FCCC Online Talk: The Political Thought of Xi Jinping
2024-03-14 17:00 - 18:00 | Google Meet
In the talk, Olivia Cheung will present the main findings of The Political Thought of Xi Jinping, the new book she co-authored with Steve Tsang for Oxford University Press. She will offer a contextualized interpretation of the meaning of Xi’s major doctrines and concepts on the politics, economy, society, and foreign policy of China. It is argued that the vision of Xi Thought can be distilled into two core elements or ambitions. The first is to create “one state, one people, one ideology, one party, and one leader.” The second is to make China great again and better than any other country in the world. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of China’s direction of travel under Xi and its implications for China and the world.

About our speaker:
Dr Olivia Cheung is Research Fellow of the China Institute at SOAS University of London. She is the author of Factional-Ideological Conflicts in Chinese Politics: To the Left or to the Right? (Amsterdam University Press, 2023; e-book gold open access) and co-author of The Political Thought of Xi Jinping (Oxford University Press, 2024). Her current research project is on China’s Global Strategy. She previously taught at the University of Warwick, where she was Course Director for the MA in International Politics and East Asia. She obtained her DPhil at Oxford where she was a Swire Scholar and a Rhodes Scholar.

FCCC In-person Talk: US-China Relations: How Stable and How Fragile? by Scott Kennedy
2024-03-20 13:30 - 14:30 | Embassy near Sanlitun, Beijing, China
Scott Kennedy, a veteran China expert from the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a DC think tank, will analyze the reasons for the current stability in U.S.-China relations and the potential sources of instability going forward.
About our speaker: Scott Kennedy is Senior Adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). A leading authority on Chinese economic policy, Kennedy has been traveling to China for over 30 years. His areas of expertise include industrial policy, technology innovation, business lobbying, U.S.-China commercial relations, and global governance.

FCCC Happy Hour
2024-03-28 19:00 - 23:00
This Thursday we have our casual after-work drinks at a pub near the Gongti area from 7 PM. As always, all colleagues and friends are welcome. Whether you’re a long-time member or a newbie to the club, please do join. Look forward to seeing you all there!

The location will be shared on Signal closer to time.
