Students from two Chinese universities will join Tufts students and a Boston College professor today to discuss energy issues facing contemporary China.
The panel discussion is part of Initiating Mutual Understanding through Student Exchange (IMUSE), a program designed by Harvard University, Peking University and Tsinghua University to encourage cultural exchange between Chinese university students and their North American peers at ten institutions of higher education in the U.S. and Canada.
The event will take place at 3 p.m. in Cabot Auditorium.
Freshman Charles Cushing helped organize the conference.
"I think this conference is a great idea," he said. "It's easy to be afraid of someone you've never met, and a lot of Americans are irrationally afraid of China right now, so giving China a human face in the form of this delegation is the exact right way to allay some of those fears."
Boston College Professor of Political Science Robert Ross, whose research focuses on Sino-American relations and Chinese politics, will moderate a question-and-answer session between the Chinese delegation and a panel of Tufts undergraduates and graduate students from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Among the topics of discussion will be Chinese coal usage and the environmental impact of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
"We will, of course, be asking [the students] about their impressions of the U.S., but we're also hoping to focus on energy issues here and in China," said sophomore Alex Ornik, a member of Tufts Energy Security Initiative (ESI) and an organizer of the conference.
Ornik went to Beijing over winter break to study wind energy. He hopes to better understand the Chinese students' opinions on their country's environmental policies.
"We're interested in their perceptions of [China's] own energy issues," Ornik said. "There's no denying that their system needs reform."
Ornik wants to promote dialogue without stirring up too much controversy.
"We want to keep these discussions friendly and informative and get some real academic substance," he said. "We want to make it an open and free discussion, not really a debate."
Cushing hopes the Tufts students will have more accurate perceptions of China after the event. "A lot of people view China as if it's a perfectly unified country with a single point of view, but that couldn't be farther from the truth," he said. "China is tremendously diverse and there are a lot of smart, capable people with interesting things to say, and hopefully this conference will allow people to see that."
IMUSE is sponsored by the Beijing Olympic Committee, Air China and Lenovo Group Limited, a Chinese personal computer manufacturer. The Tufts leg of the tour is sponsored by the ESI and the Institute for Global Leadership.
The event will offer free T-shirts for the first 50 to 100 guests as well as refreshments and boba milk tea. There will also be a raffle of Beijing Olympics mascot dolls.
