On November 16–17, the Valdai Discussion Club and East China Normal University will hold a Russian-Chinese conference in Shanghai, titled “Crisis and Global Transformation: China and Russia Facing the Challenges of a Changing World Order”.
The Valdai Club has been one of the key players which helped foster an active expert dialogue between Russia and China. For the past 10 years, it has been a leader in organising the most relevant Russian-Chinese political discussions and shaping the agenda of bilateral expert cooperation.
East China Normal University is home to one of the largest research centres in China studying Russia, the former Soviet space and Sino-Russian relations. It has established itself in aggregating the efforts of Chinese intellectual centres and serves as a platform for meetings of experts from Russia and China.
From 2010 until the start of the pandemic, Russian-Chinese conferences were held regularly. In November, the university will host its first in-person conference after a four-year break. This will be the first expert meeting of the Club with partners from China to take place following a series of top-level Russian-Chinese negotiations. At a press conference following his October visit to Beijing, Russian President Vladimir Putin said: “Actually, we set the task of attaining $200 billion [trade turnover] in 2024. When we formulated this objective in 2019, I will tell you frankly that few people believed that this was realistically possible because our trade volumes totalled $100 billion at that time; and they have already reached $200 billion, earlier than planned.”
The meeting will take place a month after the recent Belt and Road forum; in Shanghai; Russian and Chinese experts will discuss the impact of global and regional processes on the position of China and Russia in the international system, share expectations for what the new world order and international security relations will look like, and review the global economy and trade, as well as high technology and science.
The two-day conference programme includes opening and closing ceremonies, as well as 4 thematic sessions:
• Political dialogue between Russia and China in new conditions: achievements and common objectives;
• Multilateral cooperation in Greater Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region: a view from Beijing and Moscow;
• Information and communications in the modern world: significance and challenges for China and Russia;
• Globalisation and regionalisation: what do these concepts mean in the new conditions?
Russia and China are now engaged in closer relations than at any other time in history. There is mutual trust and a common vision of a new, fairer world order. “The Russian-Chinese dialogue today is more multifaceted than the Russia-US and China-US dialogue. In Russia, there are many more specialists on China than on the USA and the EU. The high level of Chinese studies in Russia and Russian studies in the PRC is becoming an advantage of bilateral relations,” noted Timofei Bordachev, curator of the Russian-Chinese conference and programme director of the Valdai Club.
Russian Ambassador to China Igor Morgulov will take part in the opening ceremony and the first session of the conference.
The Russian delegation at the conference in Shanghai will include: Leonid Grigoriev, Academic Supervisor of the Department of World Economy at the National Research University Higher School of Economics; Vasily Kashin, Director of the Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics; Alexey Kupriyanov, Head of the Centre for the Indian Ocean Region of the IMEMO RAS; Igor Makarov, Head of the Department of World Economy, Faculty of World Economy and International Politics, National Research University Higher School of Economics; Victoria Panova, Vice-Rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Sherpa of the Russian Federation in the Women’s Twenty (W20); Dmitry Stefanovich, Researcher at the Centre for International Security, IMEMO RAS; Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, Timofei Bordachev, programme director of the Valdai Discussion Club and others.
From the Chinese side, the conference will be attended by: Feng Shaolei, Director of the Centre for Russian Studies at East China Normal University; Chen Bo, Director of the Chinese Academy of International Studies; Chen Dongxiao, Director of the Shanghai Academy of International Studies; Ding Xiaoxing, Director of the Institute of Eurasian Studies of the Chinese Academy of Modern International Relations; Professor Guo Xiaoli, Institute of Foreign Languages, Hebei Normal University; Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences (AS) of the People’s Republic of China, Xing Guangcheng, Director of the Institute for the Study of Border Problems of China AOS of the People’s Republic of China; Zhang Shuhua, Director of the Institute of Political Science of the Academy of Social Sciences of the People’s Republic of China and others.
Working languages: Chinese, Russian.
