The professional association of foreign journalists in Beijing.

What will China’s economic growth model look like in the future? Everyone agrees that it has to change – before the financial crisis, global growth was characterized by growing and unsustainable imbalances reflected primarily in large trade surpluses in China, Japan, Germany, and the oil exporting countries and rapidly growing deficits, primarily in the United States.

Join a talk with Nicolas R. Lardy, author of the book “Sustaining Economic Growth in China after the Global Financial Crisis” who will elaborate on China’s response to the global crisis, the prospects that it will change the economic growth model that dominated the first decade of this century, and what a successful Chinese rebalancing would mean for the United States and the global economy.

DATE: Wednesday, March 21
TIME: 4:30-6pm
VENUE: Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business 长江商学院, Oriental Plaza, 1 East Chang An Avenue (Tower E2, 20/F, Room 7) 中国北京市东长安街 1 号东方广场东 (E2座，20层, 7), phone: 85188552      .
ENTRANCE: free to members, 80 rmb to non-members
REGISTRATION: at fcccadmin@gmail.com

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Nicholas R. Lardy is the Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He joined the Institute in March 2003 from the Brookings Institution, where he was a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program from 1995 until 2003 and served as interim director of Foreign Policy Studies in 2001. Before Brookings, he served at the University of Washington, where he was the director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies from 1991 to 1995.

Nicolas R.Lardy is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the editorial boards of the China Quarterly, China Review, and Journal of Contemporary China. He specializes in the Chinese economy.

For almost a decade, major powers have employed a combination of tactics – diplomacy, sanctions and even threats of war – to halt Iran’s nuclear activities.
However Tehran has continued to expand these activities and now stands perhaps only one year away from achieving a nuclear weapons capability. As a result, politicians in the US, Israel and elsewhere are increasingly weighing a military conflict to head off the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Michael Singh, the managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank dedicated to advancing US interests in the Middle East, will explore what options remain to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, with a specific focus on the role of the US and China as well as potential Sino-American cooperation.

DATE: Mar 13 (Tuesday)
TIME: 4:30-6pm
VENUE: FACE Bar, 26 Dongcaoyuan, Gongti Nanlu 工体南路东草园26号, Beijing, China
ENTRANCE: free to FCCC members, 80 RMB at the door for non-members
REGISTRATION: at fcccadmin@gmail.com

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Michael Singh was Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs at the White House from 2007-2008 and Director for several Middle Eastern countries – including Syria – on the NSC staff from 2005-2007. Earlier, Mr. Singh served as Special Assistant to Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, as well as staff aide to US Ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer.

What happens when a Chinese company arrives in a remote area of Africa to build a road?

Bram Van Paesschen, director of the new film “Empire of Dust”, had a rare opportunity to find out and to film the Chinese contractor’s travails – from locating construction materials to learning how to communicate with the Congolese.

DATE: March 9th
TIME: 6-7:30pm
VENUE: Embassy of Belgium, Sanlitun Lu 6
ENTRANCE: free to FCCC members, 80 RMB on the door to non-members
REGISTRATION: please email fcccadmin@gmail.com

FILM SYNOPSIS:
Lao Yang and Eddy both work for the Chinese Railway Engineering Company. They have just set up camp near the remote mining town of Kolwezi in Katanga province of the RDC. The company’s goal is to repair the road – stretching 300km – that connects Kolwezi with the provincial capital, Lubumbashi.

Lao Yang is head of logistics for his team. Using Eddy, a Congolese man who speaks fluent Mandarin, as an intermediary, Lao Yang is forced to leave the camp and deal with local Congolese entrepreneurs in search of the construction materials he needs to build the road.

What follows is an endless, harsh, but absurdly funny roller coaster of negotiations and misunderstandings, as Lao Yang learns about the Congolese way of making deals.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
Bram Van Paesschen was born in 1979 in Vilvoorde, Belgium. He graduated in 2002 from Sint-Lukas in Brussels, where he specialized in film/video documentary work. He lives and works in Brussels. “Empire of Dust” is his fifth movie.

VENUE: The Bookworm
DATE: Friday,  Mar 2
TIME: 6:30-10:30pm
ENTRANCE: free, non-members very welcome as always
DIZZY DRINKS DISCOUNT: for FCCC members on Carlsberg and Yanjing draught beer; bottled Tsing Tao, house wine and mixed drinks

Could the yuan topple the dollar as an international reserve currency, or does the process risk unbalancing the Chinese economy itself? How can China successfully promote a strong yuan abroad when its domestic financial system is still so weak and underdeveloped? And how will all this play out in the context of a rising China whose export juggernaut threatens a backlash in the West?

To discuss these and other issues arising from China’s currency and trade policies, two of the leading global thinkers on the Chinese economy, Arvind Subramanian and Eswar Prasad, will speak at an event hosted by the the Indian Embassy, in collaboration with FCCC.

The discussion will be moderated by the China Editor of the Wall Street Journal, Andrew Browne.

DATE: Feb 28 (Tuesday)
TIME: 10:30am-12:00pm
VENUE: Embassy of India, No. 5 Tianze Road, Liangmaqiao North Street, Chaoyang District (new address)
REGISTRATION: at fcccadmin@gmail.com
ENTRANCE: free to FCCC members, 80 RMB on the door to non-members

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Arvind Subramanian is senior fellow jointly at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for Global Development.
He was assistant director in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. He served at the GATT (1988–92) during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and taught at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (1999–2000) and at Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies (2008–10). (more)

Eswar Prasad is the Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy at Cornell University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he holds the New Century Chair in International Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was previously chief of the Financial Studies Division in the International Monetary Fund’s Research Department and, before that, was the head of the IMF’s China Division. (more)