Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, The University of Melbourne
HEALTH SYSTEM REFORM IN CHINA,
Speaker: Dr George Liu — La Trobe University
5:30 – 7:00pm, Thursday 16 August 2018,
Theatre 1, Old Geology (Building 155), The University of Melbourne
China used to be a global role model for its health care system, characterised by universal access to primary care and public ownership. But hospitals became a dominant force since China commenced market reform in the late 1970s. High user charges in hospital care prompted new development of social health insurance and governmental efforts to revitalise primary care. […] The Chinese government plans to introduce an activity based funding mechanism for public hospitals. This may offer the government a new instrument for exerting control over the exorbitant growth of hospitals. However, a systems approach is essential in order to balance the needs for efficiency, equity, safety and quality of care.
CHINA’S BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE IN EUROPE,
Speaker: Dr Gudrun Wacker — German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Berlin)
5:30 – 7:00pm, Thursday 6 September 2018,
Theatre 1, Old Geology (Building 155), The University of Melbourne
The initial response of the EU and European member states to Xi Jinping’s launch of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road was quite positive. A platform to explore options for cooperation between China and the EU was formally established in Brussels in 2015. […] The presentation will address the following questions: How is the Belt and Road Initiative seen in Europe? What has been its impact so far? Where do EU interests converge with and diverge from China’s? What role does the 16+1 process (i.e. a group of 11 Eastern European EU member states, 5 aspirants to EU membership and China) play? What did this year’s EU-China summit bring? What is and what should be the way forward for the EU?
PARALLEL GOVERNANCE IN CHINA: THE CASE OF DISASTER RELIEF
Speaker: Dr Fengshi Wu — Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies (University of Melbourne)
5:30 – 7:00pm, Thursday 13 September 2018,
Theatre 1, Old Geology (Building 155), The University of Melbourne
When natural disasters strike, which channels do people in Chinese seek for urgent relief and to spread the information? Based on field work and interviews since 2009, this research finds that during crisis time, non-governmental actors carry out relief missions effectively in parallel with state agencies in many parts of China. A highly networked and capable non-governmental organization (NGO) community in disaster relief has emerged, operated across-regions and established a system of self-governance in the country. […] Case evidence seems to point out that NGOs and other types of non-state actors can build up a de facto governing mechanism, given all the suitable conditions, to replaces many of the state functions and even makes the state obsolete in some cases.
CHINA’S FIRST CHARITY LAW AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR CIVIL SOCIETY
Speaker: Dr Anthony Spires — Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies (University of Melbourne)
5:30 – 7:00pm, Thursday 4 October 2018,
Theatre 1, Old Geology (Building 155), The University of Melbourne
With the passage of China’s first Charity Law in March 2016, Chinese nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) entered a new and unprecedented era of legal regulation, one that dramatically transforms the formal rules governing state-civil society relations. This talk will highlight problems experienced under earlier regulations and outline some major features of the new law. Drawing on grassroots NGO responses to the law’s initial public drafts, I will analyse gaps between NGO leaders’ understandings of their work and several of the law’s key provisions, revealing civil society’s scepticism and pessimism about prospects for change. The talk concludes by considering the law’s likely implications for civil society development in China.
DISABILITY AS EXCEPTION: DIGITAL ECONOMY OF DISABILITY IN CHINA
Speaker: Assoc. Professor Haiqing Yu — RMIT University
5:30 – 7:00pm, Thursday 18 October 2018
Theatre 1, Old Geology (Building 155), The University of Melbourne
With the increasing prevalence and impact of information and communication technologies on the Chinese socio-economic fabric, growing numbers of disabled people have sought employment and income opportunities by harnessing the power the ICTs and China’s growing digital economy. The Chinese government and its governing body of disability affairs (the Chinese Disabled Persons’ Federation) have encouraged e-solutions to disability employment through the ‘Internet + disability’ and “e-commerce + disability’ policies; they have worked with private Internet companies, civil society organisations, and transnational corporations to expand the disability employment and poverty alleviation agendas. […] Drawing on Aihwa Ong’s work on neoliberalism as exception and Susan Greenhalgh’s work on China’s population governance, I argue that disability as an identity category has become a key neoliberal technology in China’s new mode of socio-economic governance; it is a political imperative to incorporate disability in the Chinese dream discourse. Disability as exception is allegorical to the rise of China who has been ‘handicapped’ in a US-centred world order and yet risen to challenge it.