Celebrating the Thirtieth Anniversary of the IES

On April 21, 2011, the Institute of European Studies (IES) at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) celebrated its thirtieth anniversary.  Executive Vice President Wang Weiguang and Vice President Li Yang of CASS, Mr. Markus Ederer, the EU’s newly arrived ambassador to Beijing, and many other prominent figures were present at the ceremony.

Prof. Wang Weiguang offered his congratulations by praising the IES for its remarkable academic achievements over the past three decades. Mr. Mei Zhaorong, former Chinese ambassador to Germany, Prof. Yang Huilin, Vice President of the People’s University of China, and Prof. Dai Bingran, Vice President of the Chinese Association for European Studies, also spoke at the gathering. All of them said highly of what has been achieved by the IES scholars.

The IES was founded in May 1981 as the Institute of Western European Studies. Its name was changed into the IES in 1994.  It is a national institution of academic researches on European political, economic, legal, social, cultural, external affairs and science and technology policy. 

After the ceremony, the annual China-EU Ambassadors Forum was held. Ambassador Ederer spoke at the forum on the EU’s foreign policies and also on the EU-China relations after the Lisbon Treaty.  Director Zhou Hong commented on Ederer’s speech by saying that, given the nature of mutual dependence and benefits of the China-EU relations, the two sides need to move forward beyond the differences in their political, economic and social systems.

For the next session on EU’s 2020 Strategy and China’s 12th 5-Year Plan, Prof. Xu Mingqi, Deputy Director of the Institute of World Economy, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, compared the two grand visions set out by the EU and China. He predicted that increased cooperation between the two sides would contribute to the success of the 2020 Strategy and the 12^th 5-Year Plan.  Joao Santos, a diplomat from the EU Delegation's Trade and Investment Section also spoke on the same topic.  He outlined the similarities and differences of the 2020 Strategy and the 12^th 5-Year Plan and pointed out a number of issues that should be dealt with by both sides so as to further promote bilateral cooperation.

At the session titled “New Development and the Future of G20”, Prof. Jiang Shixue, Deputy Director of Institute of European Studies, CASS, summarized what has been achieved after the last G20 summit in South Korea, and suggested that better coordination and consultation is need for both China and the EU to strengthen cooperation in the G20. Annika Melander, Head of the Economic and Financial Affairs Section at the EU Delegation, also believed that there are good opportunities of cooperation for the two sides for the year during which France assumes the G20 Presidency.

At the Ambassador’s forum, the annual report, also called Blue Book of Europe, was released.  This book is the result of collective efforts by the IES scholars to offer their understanding of what had been going in the EU’s political, economic and social fields as well as its external diplomacy in the past year.