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A Week in China
Oct. 22nd, 2023 01:03 amWith an eight-hour overnight layover between flights at Guangzhou airport, I find myself composing a few notes on my first visit to the People's Republic of China after spending a week at the 2023 International Conference on Green and Innovation-Driven Development in Cities and Towns (a rather wordy title) at Suzhou, a large city that has a long history and is now a hub for international technological developments. The conference and the few hundred guests were housed in the brand-new and truly massive (1500 rooms!) Suzhou International Conference Hotel, which is certainly one of the best I've ever been to in my not-inconsiderable experience. Attendees included the Vice-Director of the provincial foreign affairs office, the district mayor and deputy mayor, a multitude of local academics and scientists, and various international guests, including the deputy speaker of the Portuguese parliament.
The formal conference agenda was really only a single day of parallel sessions, concentrating on heritage protection and integrating urban and rural areas. The rest of the time was a combination of historic town visits (Museum of Imperial Kiln Bricks, Humble Administrator's Garden (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), Suzhou Silk Museum, Embroidery Art Musuem) and high-tech development centres (the industrial park exhibition centre, the Higer bus company, the High-Tech Rail Tram Limited, the local campus of Nanjing University). Also of particular note was the astoundingly beautiful Taihu Lake wetland park whose resident giant pandas attracted, of course, a great deal of interest. My main interest was the degree to which the city is especially involved in the development of ICVs ("intelligent connected vehicles") and their production of electric vehicles. I was positively charmed by the automated cleaning robot that did its rounds on the lake next to the hotel. There was, it must be said, an absence of discussion on the pressing environmental challenges facing China as a whole and more of an emphasis on the successful integration of high-technology industries, historical character, and the natural environment in the city itself.
Of course, there were a number of networking opportunities, although I must confess I often gravitated toward the several visiting New Zealanders and the other two Australians. One new contact of note was Pinjun, a deputy director of the Provincial Department of Agricultural and Rural Affairs, who introduced me to the work that the local vocational college of Agriculture and Forestry is doing with international students from developing countries for food security science in the context of climate change. With three assignments and an exam this coming week for my own climate science degree, it was a very serendipitous meeting of minds. I will also take this opportunity to express my deep thanks to Tower L., for helping organise my attendance on the trip, to David, who helped manage the Australian visitors during the conference proper, and Robin M., and Anthony L, for pre-and-post journey assistance.
I am cognisant that I have visited a fairly well-off area of China. Even with this in consideration, I cannot help but notice the exceptional scale at which operations are carried out, the gleaming newness of the modern structures and infrastructure, the levels of cleanliness, the quantity of electric vehicles on the road, the landscaping of public space, and so forth. There were little signs of dire poverty and an absence of visceral petty crime (I'm sure all of this exists, I'm just going on my observations). It is clearly still a developing country in many ways, but one that is that is making its way to a top-tier economy very rapidly. Most of all, "Shared Prosperity" is apparently more than just a slogan.
The formal conference agenda was really only a single day of parallel sessions, concentrating on heritage protection and integrating urban and rural areas. The rest of the time was a combination of historic town visits (Museum of Imperial Kiln Bricks, Humble Administrator's Garden (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), Suzhou Silk Museum, Embroidery Art Musuem) and high-tech development centres (the industrial park exhibition centre, the Higer bus company, the High-Tech Rail Tram Limited, the local campus of Nanjing University). Also of particular note was the astoundingly beautiful Taihu Lake wetland park whose resident giant pandas attracted, of course, a great deal of interest. My main interest was the degree to which the city is especially involved in the development of ICVs ("intelligent connected vehicles") and their production of electric vehicles. I was positively charmed by the automated cleaning robot that did its rounds on the lake next to the hotel. There was, it must be said, an absence of discussion on the pressing environmental challenges facing China as a whole and more of an emphasis on the successful integration of high-technology industries, historical character, and the natural environment in the city itself.
Of course, there were a number of networking opportunities, although I must confess I often gravitated toward the several visiting New Zealanders and the other two Australians. One new contact of note was Pinjun, a deputy director of the Provincial Department of Agricultural and Rural Affairs, who introduced me to the work that the local vocational college of Agriculture and Forestry is doing with international students from developing countries for food security science in the context of climate change. With three assignments and an exam this coming week for my own climate science degree, it was a very serendipitous meeting of minds. I will also take this opportunity to express my deep thanks to Tower L., for helping organise my attendance on the trip, to David, who helped manage the Australian visitors during the conference proper, and Robin M., and Anthony L, for pre-and-post journey assistance.
I am cognisant that I have visited a fairly well-off area of China. Even with this in consideration, I cannot help but notice the exceptional scale at which operations are carried out, the gleaming newness of the modern structures and infrastructure, the levels of cleanliness, the quantity of electric vehicles on the road, the landscaping of public space, and so forth. There were little signs of dire poverty and an absence of visceral petty crime (I'm sure all of this exists, I'm just going on my observations). It is clearly still a developing country in many ways, but one that is that is making its way to a top-tier economy very rapidly. Most of all, "Shared Prosperity" is apparently more than just a slogan.