Streamed live from the Asia Society Hong Kong Center, 20 July 2020
Panel Speaker: David Zweig
In 2008, China’s Communist Party created the Thousand Talents Program (TTP) to counteract the brain drain trend that had seen many of the country’s best and brightest minds emigrate and settle overseas. According to Li Yuanchao, the reformist former Chinese Communist Party Politiburo member who developed the program, the stated goal of the TTP was to build an “innovative society.” However, in the past few years, the United States government has become growingly alarmed by and hostile towards the TTP, particularly in the technology development domain.
Under the current political atmosphere in Washington, American suspicion regarding China’s aspirations to become a scientific superpower through the TTP is only growing stronger. Cases of Chinese discrimination in universities and within corporations are increasingly institutionalized. Hurdles to cooperation are becoming more commonplace. As neither the United States nor China would benefit from a permanent technological decoupling, what steps should China take to make their national talent programs more open? Likewise, how can America make its investigations into these alleged cases more transparent? Join Asia Society Hong Kong Center as we host Professor Frank H. Wu, President of Queen’s College at City University of New York and author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White and Professor David Zweig, Director of the Center on China’s Transnational Relations at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, to engage in this important dialogue on the need for better ‘rules of the road’ on scientific advancement and cooperation between the US and China.