Let's Brace Ourselves and Welcome the New Semester | Tomoyuki Kojima (Dean, Faculty of Policy Management)
2004.09.24
From August 17 to 19, I went on a three-day, two-night business trip to Beijing. The trip had two purposes. The first was for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' "Japan-China Intellectual Exchange Program: Governance Research for China's Comprehensively Well-off Society." The other was a meeting with our Chinese counterparts for the "Japan-China Environmental Policy Cooperation Study," which is being advanced under SFC's "Policy COE: Formation of a Leading Center for Comprehensive Policy Studies in Japan and Asia."
Twenty years ago, I lived in Beijing with my family for one year and two months, working at the Japanese Embassy as a special researcher for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Reform and Opening-Up policy had just begun to take hold in the cities, and my title on my Chinese business card was "Political Specialist" (政治専員). Immediately after my appointment, I was often mistaken for a Japanese special agent and was constantly met with suspicion. The city was not as glamorous as it is today. When driving at night on Chang'an Avenue, a main road 100 meters wide, the few oncoming cars would approach without their headlights on in the pitch-black darkness.
Today, the city is overflowing with cars, the streets are lit up at night, and it has changed so much that it would be only a slight exaggeration to say it is comparable to Tokyo. Interactions with Chinese researchers and government officials have also become much freer. On this trip, I had dinner with an old friend, the deputy director of the Central Party Literature Research Office of the Communist Party of China, and we had a very in-depth discussion about the 100th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's birth and recent Chinese politics.
On this business trip, in connection with the research on Japan-China environmental policy cooperation, I discussed research collaboration with the dean of the School of Environment at Tsinghua University. This school is China's largest research center for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), one of the trading schemes for CO2 (carbon dioxide). They are already in the process of constructing a high-rise building for the CDM Research Center using ODA from Italy.
The person who arranged the contact with the school was one of my former students, a Chinese international student. She graduated from SFC's Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, completed the master's program at the Graduate School of Media and Governance, earned her doctorate at Nagoya University, and is now an associate professor at the same school at Tsinghua University. As someone who has been involved in China studies for many years, it was deeply moving for me to see one of my own students return to China and contribute to environmental research there.
August 18, the day I visited Tsinghua University, was the university's entrance ceremony. According to her, many parents of new students come from all over the country to attend the entrance ceremony, and the parents of the students she is in charge of come to greet her, asking her to "take good care" of their sons and daughters. The scene is almost identical to an entrance ceremony in Japan. However, this is China. Although classes begin on September 1, a ten-day military training was scheduled to start two days after the entrance ceremony.
SFC also held its entrance ceremony for the fall semester on September 22. There is no military training, but let's brace ourselves and, with a fresh mindset for the new semester, tackle the discovery and solution of new problems!
(Date Published: 2004/09/24)