From July 4-6, Dr. Denis Simon, executive vice chancellor of Duke Kunshan University joined representatives from over 50 countries and regions to attend the Civil Society 20 (C20) China 2016 in Qingdao, Shandong Province.
The C20 is a platform for civil society organizations from around the world to engage with G20 governments on the key issues of economics, politics and society facing our world today. The theme of this year’s C20 is ‘Poverty Eradication, Green Development, and Innovation: The Role of Civil Society’.
Along with participating in the key plenary sessions, Simon gave a presentation at the third special session dealing with the role of civil society in driving innovation. This session featured speakers from private universities and various NGOs from China and around the world. Simon’s talk focused on the new evolving role of universities in preparing young people for living and working effectively and ethically in the innovation-driven knowledge economy of the 21st century. Using Duke Kunshan University as an example of pedagogical innovation, Simon described the core mission of Duke Kunshan as a university that trains students who will design the new jobs of the future rather than simply filling the jobs that currently exist. His speech concentrated on the six core animating features of the proposed new undergraduate curriculum to be offered at Duke Kunshan University in Fall 2018. Simon emphasized that today’s universities should not be satisfied with their current pedagogical predisposition, as the demands for training a new type of innovation-driven entrepreneurial graduates are increasing every day. The successful graduates of the future must be critical thinkers who are globally aware and yet locally connected; they also must be sensitive to the ethical consequences of their behavior, possess wise insightful leadership skills, and be oriented in the direction of having a purposeful life that is responsive to addressing the world’s most challenging issues.
The formal presentation session was followed by a lively discussion of the role of education in helping lesser developed countries acquire the knowledge and expertise to overcome their own specific challenges, including poverty eradication and more sustainable development. One of the points raised by Simon and by Lang Ping, deputy director of international politics theory at Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was the expanded use of new and dynamic education technologies. Discussants supported the idea of working with the world’s leading IT and communication firms to construct a global infrastructure that provides various channels for delivering courses and bringing other types of information to all parts of the globe. The participants also agreed that the innovative pedagogy developed by Duke Kunshan must be shared, so that other institutions can benefit from the edgy work that is under development for better preparing talent to meet societal demands in the future. The discussion ended with a call for more dialogue among developing nations, with China playing a more leading role in sharing its positive experiences from reform and opening up over the last three decades.
Simon was named a C20 conference delegate through nomination by the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development (CASTED), a think tank under the Ministry of Science and Technology in China. Simon and CASTED have worked together for many years on joint studies of the Chinese innovation system.
A “Communique of Civil Society 20 China 2016” was issued in Qingdao July 6th. The Communique called on all nations to work together to deal with the current economic slowdown in the global economy. It was advocated that despite the slowing of the global economy, the problems of poverty eradication and sustainable development should not be ignored or given less attention. In fact, this is point in time where innovation and entrepreneurship are most needed to ensure we do not take a step back from the progress of previous years. The role of China, in particular, was cited as an important engine for global growth. It is anticipated that the growth of China’s economy will proceed ahead, even if the remarkable growth rates of the 1980s and 1990s are no longer viable.
