On November 17th, Professor YAO Zhongqiu(Qiufeng), President of Unirule, and Professor FENG Xingyuan, Deputy Director of Unirule, were invited to EU-China Urbanization Partnership- Guangzhou Forum. This forum was entitled “China-Europe Dialogue and the Construction of Sustainable Cities”, and was organized by China-Europa Forum, China International Urbanization Development Strategy Research Committee, and JunZeJun Law Offices. This forum aims to engage Chinese and European officials and experts in dialogue on various aspects of the transition to a sustainable city, to create more opportunities for cooperation as the EU-China Partnership commences.
Professor YAO Zhongqiu(Qiufeng) and Professor FENG Xingyuan were invited to join Workshop 4, “Evolution of the Governance Model, Training and Communication”, giving presentations in the afternoon session. Professor YAO Zhongqiu(Qiufeng) started with the Confucian traditions and illustrated his understanding on the traditional Chinese governance model. He pointed out the pragmatic implications of the traditional autonomous governance model and traditional culture on the evolution of modern city planning and governance. He proposed that the contribution to governance by Confucianism was the concept of “self-governing”. He also took questions from the guests and participants. Professor FENG Xingyuan proposed the ideal standards of Chinese city planning by comparing contemporary experience in China and the benchmarks in the developed countries from an institutional perspective. He pointed out that the ideal city planning should be a collaborative planning combined with local democracy which was impossible to separate from individual freedom. Professor FENG also attended the welcome banquet and gave a speech on behalf of Unirule. He said that it was very helpful for China to promote urbanization and city planning based on property rights protection by drawing lessons from the EU. He ended his speech by quoting the late Nobel Prize winner, Professor Ronald Coase, “The struggle of China… is the struggle of the world.” Unirule Research Center for Regional Development(Guangzhou) was a coorganizer of this event. Executive Director Mr. ZHAO Xu and Deputy Director Professor FENG Xingyuan are also invited to attend the China-EU summit on November 21st.
(By International Cooperation Department)
