As Hong Kong celebrates the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Special Administrative Region on July 1st, the world is not short of turbulences. The conflict in Ukraine sees no sign of ceasing, the tension across the Taiwan Straits flares up, and the intense struggle between China and the US continues. According to Zhang Weiwei, a leading thinker based in Shanghai, this is also a time of crisis for liberal democracy. He will explore, from a civilisational state’s perspective, the meaning of democracy and good governance as well as its possible implications for the future of China’s political relations with the West and for Hong Kong entering the next phase of One Country, Two Systems. Moderated by FCC President Keith Richburg.
Zhang Weiwei is a distinguished professor of international relations and Director of the China Institute at Fudan University, as well as a board member of China’s National Think Tanks Council. He had worked as a senior English interpreter for Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders in the mid-1980s and has travelled to over 100 countries. He holds a Ph.D. in international relations from Geneva University and has written extensively in Chinese and English on China’s political and economic reforms, the China model of development, China’s foreign policy and comparative political governance. He first predicted that the Arab Spring would soon become the Arab winter in a much-publicised debate in 2011 with Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last man.
