Closing speech by Jianxing Yu, Dean of School of Public Affairs, ZJU
1 April, 2016
Dear distinguished guests,
After two-day long, open and innovative discussion and dialogue, we have successfully concluded our conference. Our speakers, from global and Chinese policy thinkers and scholars from different disciplines, have contributed truly innovative ideas to the topics under discussion, from regional and global trading system to ecological governance. I hope, these new ideas, and a blue paper based on these ideas, shall shape the new agenda of global governance, and have a positive influence on the forthcoming G20 to be held in Hangzhou in September.
My main areas of research focus on local governance. In fact, local governance has many commonalities with global governance, sharing some general principles of governance, such as seeking good governance, emphasizing plurality and partnership of governing body, and stressing participation, negotiation and coordination in the way of governance, emphasizing the act of steering, guiding, and piloting, etc. But, most importantly, the core values of global governance have to be recognized and processed in various local contexts, and the whole process needs local participation, and the contents need to consider the local interests, achieving a balance of conflicts of interests. Hangzhou will be the host city for G20 this year. All levels of Hangzhou municipality, NGO, NPO, and general population have made great efforts in preparation for the G20 summit. Today, every ordinary citizen in Hangzhou knows G20, knows what it is about, and is willing to tolerate all kinds of inconvenience for the G20 summit. Can we say what the local people do today is the act of combining global governance and local governance?
In the meanwhile, there exist some tensions between global governance and local governance. If advocates of global governance pursue universal values and common basis, aiming at some common basis for global political and economic governance models, those advocates of local governance may put more emphasis on the perpetual incompleteness, social complexity, pluralism, and dispersion articulated by postmodernism. Therefore, advocates of local governance do not seek a universal truth or a universal model for all, because they believe that there are many truths to a fact, and many interpretations of a fact, and thus emphasize that a unitary or unchanged governance model does not exist, and everything evolves along with the changing context, as the world is in a state of perpetual incompleteness and permanent unresolvedness. It seems to me that integration and fragmentation coexist, and it might be a reasonable paradox in the process of global governance. These are some of my reflections on this conference, and its dialogue.
Happy time is always short and temporary. After such a short, fantastic two days, our conference has come to its conclusion. As the host of the conference, I wish to take this opportunity to thank our wonderful partners, UBC, University of Toronto, the Brookings Institution, Rockcheck Group and many others for their co-sponsorship, particularly the “movers and shakers” of Vision 20 initiative, Professor Yves Tiberghien. Our partnership has set up a good model of good governance for running a successful conference.
Certainly, we owe most to our distinguished speakers and participants. As Hegel says, philosophy is the god in the temple. You are the gods in our conference. Without you, we could not imagine we can have such a successful conference. Everyone of you has added color and character to the conference. In the future global governance, I hope you will remember this conference, and join hands with Zhejiang University to establish a global network of research.
I also want to thank our audience. What a great loss and pity for such wonderful conference without audience! Your participation has greatly enlarged the “marginal rate of economic returns” of this conference.
I also want to thank our friends of media organization. You shoulder the mission to communicate with the public in addition to sharing the great ideas of our speakers, and promote the influence of these ideas articulated by my distinguished speakers.
Finally, but not the least, I want to thank our conference logistics team, Ying Xiaofei, Zhang Weiwen, Song Shan, the university office of foreign affairs, other team members, and many student volunteers. They are no doubt very capable, and dedicated in preparation and service for the speakers and conference. I hope they will have a good sleep tonight. Of course, I sincerely hope you would forgive them for any weaknesses, flaws or inconvenience that may occur during the conference.
Thank you all!