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China Week

China Week is our flagship, week-long series of events designed to help contribute to an informed understanding of China's growing global influence through research and public engagement. 

Hosted by the Lau China Institute, each year China Week brings together experts from across academia, industry and government to explore the key themes in China's modern development through interactive discussions and debates.

China Week 2024 | 14-18 October  

Whither the China Model: The economic, developmental and social challenges facing China today 

With China facing significant headwinds in its domestic economy, this year's China Week explores what the future model for growth and development might look like, what challenges the country is facing today, what these mean for the rest of the world, and how these may be overcome.   

Keynote speaker - Michael Pettis, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

We are delighted to announce China economy expert, Michael Pettis, as our keynote speaker for this year's China Week. Michael is a Beijing-based senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has been teaching finance at Peking University since 2004. From 2002 to 2004, he also taught at Tsinghua University and, from 1992 to 2001, at Columbia University. Prior to moving to China in 2002, Pettis spent fifteen years on Wall Street where he ran trading and capital markets desks focusing mainly on Latin America. He has published six books, the most recent of which, "Trade Wars are Class Wars" (Yale University Press, 2019), was the 2021 Lionel Gelber Book Prize Winner. 

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2023 - China as an Education, Research and Development Superpower?

China Week 2023 took place from 16-20 October and looked at the theme of education and research. Experts explored the opportunities and challenges presented by China as a potential future global leader in education, research and knowledge, and what it means for how we continue to do research in, on and with China.

Guests were invited to engage in a deeper dialogue on China’s progress in research and development, the values that underpin this, and how they may lead to better research outcomes for both society and the planet.

Professor Daniel A. Bell delivered the closing keynote with a talk on the Confucian and Communist comeback in contemporary China. 

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Watch the replays

2022 - Exploring China's digital revolution

China Week 2022 took place from 17-21 October on the theme of China's digital revolution, and explored the opportunities and challenges that China’s technological advancements present for China and the rest of the world, with the closing keynote by conceptual artist, Ai Weiwei.

Topics of discussion included:

  • China and the digital world order
  • China’s envirotech landscape
  • Big tech and the platform economy
  • Digital surveillance in China
  • Xi and the future of China’s leadership
  • Freedom of speech and surveillance

Download the programme

 

Watch the replays

 

2021 - Climate change and the environment

The inaugural China Week, hosted by the Lau China Institute, was held between 25-29 October 2021, in the lead-up to the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26).

Themed on climate change and the environment, the five-day flagship China Week series was a unique forum for discussion on China’s role in addressing the greatest global challenge of our time.

During the week, we hosted a range of in-person, hybrid and online events, including diverse perspectives from 46 speakers across academia, government and industry. With the help of 16 supporting partners, we achieved our goal of facilitating dialogue on China to inform a global audience by sharing our expertise in an accessible way.

The speakers involved in China Week represented a range of leading organisations, including the World Economic Forum, United Nations Environment Programme, Harvard Business School, Chatham House, China Dialogue, the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change at the London School of Economics, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Beijing Normal University, Australian National University, World Resources Institute, the Institute for International Political Studies and more.

Welcoming more than 1,800 guests across the week – both online and in-person – our audience included policymakers, industry leaders, NGOs, researchers and, of course, students.

Check out each individual event for recordings, photos and more details. All of the recorded events are also available on our Youtube channel.

Topics covered during the 2021 China Week included:

  • China’s 2060 carbon pledge and the economic transition to a low carbon future
  • the ‘green steel’ opportunity
  • digital environmental activism in the China
  • biodiversity and COP15
  • the health impacts of climate change
  • the Build Back Better World (B3W) vs the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI)
  • the Green Belt & Road
  • the role of youth in driving change

Download the 2021 China Week programme (2.98 MB PDF).