Meetings with Chinese institutions

This year again Prof. Urio visited China, and more particularly Tsinghua and Renmin Universities, as well as the China Executive Academy Pudong (CELAP) in Shanghai.

One of the purposes of the visit was to present the book on China 's reforms (Paolo Urio, Reconciling State , Market and Society in China . The long march toward prosperity , London & New York , Routledge. 2010) to several institutions and colleagues at Tsinghua: Hu Angang, Cui Zheyuan, Yang Yongheng, Wang Ming, Liu Qiushi, Li Xiguang, Nailene Chou Wiest), Renmin (Dong Keyong, Wang Hufeng), as well as to CELAP (Jiang Haishan, Sean Hu), and to the National Development and Reforms Commission (Zuo Chuanchang).

At Tsinghua, Renmin and CELAP Prof. Urio discussed the project of further developing the cooperation with ECMI. A two-month visit during 2010 has been agreed upon.

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Meetings with former students

During his visit Prof. Urio took the opportunity to visit some of his former students.

During his visit to Shanghai Prof. Urio met Mr Alessandro Fatovic who graduated in 2004 from the University of Geneva within the Master in Asian Studies with a thesis on the possibility to export Italian agro-products to China . After several years spent with an Italian company in Tianjin and Beijing , Mr Fatovic moved to Shanghai as General Manager of the Canadian company Kasian Global (China) (www.kasian.com).

During his stay in Beijing Prof. Urio met Ms Jiang Ping who graduated from Geneva University in 2005 within the Master in Public Management with a thesis on the relationship between politics and administration in China from Empire to PRC. Ms Jiang presently holds an interesting position within the International Department under the Permanent committee of the Politburo.

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How you can have your PC repaired on a Saturday afternoon in Beijing

When you discover on a Saturday morning that your PC is not working any more and you have to finish some work for the following Monday, you may feel really desperate if you remember that in the West it is almost impossible to find a specialist able to restore your PC. In my case in Beijing it worked out this way:

I call one of my colleagues at Tsinghua University, who puts me in contact with one of his assistants with whom I have been working for the last 2 years and has become a fr9iend of mine, who puts me in contact with one of his friend who is running a PC Company in a building just beside my hotel: Mr Ahn Seung Hae (www.techract.com). Mr Ahn comes to my hotel at 14.15 and having tried in vain to fix my PC offers to take it to his nearby office. Towards 20.30, having worked for about 6 hours, my PC is working all right again. When I ask how much I owe him, he simply refuses to take any money saying that in his culture when a friend asks for a favour for one of his friends it is normal not to charge any money. Can you imagine this type of situation in Europe or in the US?

Prof. Urio with Mr Ahn Seung Hae, Founder/CEO of Techract BeiJing Corp. (left) and
Ms Liu Zhen, Co-Founder/Director of Corporate Affairs

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ECMI contributed to the Conference on “Global Healthcare Reform Experiences” organized by the School of Public Administration of Renmin University in Beijing . ECMI has sponsored the participation of the Prof. Alberto Holly ( University of Lausanne ) who gave a conference of the Swiss Health system.

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The first semester of 2009 has been devoted to the completion of the books on China's reforms and on Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in transition countries (i.e. China , Poland , Russia and Ukraine).

The book on China's reforms will be published by Routledge (London and New York) in December 2009.

The book on PPPs will be published by UPA (University Press of America) at the beginning of 2010.

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©2022 Paolo Urio | Email: paolo.urio@unige.ch |