Down to Business #5: Chinghua University

Friday, we began the day with another coordination breakfast to talk about what we had learned and then had the morning free to visit a grand observatory not far from our hotel on JiangGuoMen Street. The place is marvelous - all the old instruments for charting stars were on top of this building, which wants was a fort.

Afterwards, we rushed back to the hotel to get changed and ready for our next meeting - a dialogue with young scholars of International Security at Chinghua University. Chinghua is considered to be China's most prestigious (President Hu Jintao went there, for example). The campus is huge and beautiful - reminding me at times of University of Michigan with its size and beauty (40K + students at Chinghua).

The campus is full of history too. Our counterparts were eager to show us the pond named for a leader in China who, in the midst of their civil war, refused American food aid and starved to death. Apparently his writings are very widely ready by young Chinese undergraduate students. He is considered to be of the boldest and bravest defenders of his homeland. With that kind of background, I think it will take a long time before Chinese elites would trust the USA or US elites would trust the Peoples' Republic.

That was most intense and most pleasant. A great blend of mutual critique and humor. For example, after one PhD candidate lambasted the US-Japan joint theater missile defense program - presenting his calculations that the missiles of the program will violate an international treaty (MCTR) he concluded by saying this. "Thank you for listening to my presentation. I have chosen this topic because I like many scholars, I love to point out the faults of another country while evading questions about those of my own." The room erupted in laughter.

We found a lot of common ground - wide support for international institutions and a legal order, for example. There was also agreement that the growth in economic ties etc are on the whole positive. Lots of other agreements abounded, but there was the occassional existential question of "why do you view us as a threat?"

Based on that great first presentation, our other presentations to each other moved along in a similar vein: deep critiques, supported by evidence, mutual congratulation on our work and plenty of jokes. I had a wonderful time at Chinghua, and learned quite a lot.