Before I arrived at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, I was curious about the different ways that international and Chinese students interact with each other. Bilingual events at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center are one way that students engage with each and take advantage of the unique fact that students have language skills in both Chinese and English. At the end of October, for the first time, the Hopkins-Nanjing Center offered a truly bilingual mini-course with course time split between the two languages. During the year, the Hopkins-Nanjing Center hosts professors from other universities, or from professional experts in the field, to not just give a lecture, but to teach an intensive course over the weekend.
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| Students gathered on the first day of the course |
The most recent mini-course was focused on China-Africa relations, a topic of increasing importance. It was a great opportunity to have Professor Joshua Eisenman from University of Texas at Austin and Professor Wang Duanyong from Shanghai International Studies University share their research and perspectives on Sino-African relations.
Given that I had heard about Chinese investment in African countries before, but had never actually formally studied the issue, the three-day mini-course was a great opportunity to hear differing perspectives about it from an American political scientist and from a Chinese economist. The mini-course was open to all students, regardless of having prior knowledge about China-Africa relations. The lectures prompted fruitful discussions between Chinese and international students.
On Friday, we began the course with a history of China-Africa relations and an overview of current relations in order to prepare us to learn about economic, political, and cultural issues. During our class on Saturday, we analyzed statements from the Chinese government about China’s aid to African countries. In our discussions we considered Chinese motivations, responses from African governments, and overall, what we thought the strategic goals of the interactions might be. We even discussed definitions and specific terms used in dialogue among different governments. As relatively few scholars are researching this relationship, it was very useful to hear about research on the topic in comparison with what is reported in the media.
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Professor Eisenman
lectures on China’s political history with African states
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On Sunday afternoon, our “reward,” as Professor Eisenman described it, was a crisis simulation that, “was ripped from the headlines.” We spent about three and a half hours doing a crisis simulation based on an event involving Chinese miners in Ghana. Each student was assigned a role as part of a government, a private citizen of China, Ghana, or Nigeria, or as part of the press. While many students acted as members of governments, attempting to resolve and negotiate the issue, I was given the role of a journalist. Even after a long weekend, everyone was dedicated to playing out their role, making the simulation fast-paced with constant changes. Although I had less information than most participants and many of the students portraying government officials were uninterested in talking to the media outlets, I was in a very interactive role, getting to hear about how a variety of students were approaching the issue based on their role and based on their own viewpoints.
At the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, students are frequently encouraged to engage with each other and not spend all of their time focusing just on coursework. This mini-course was academic, but it encouraged students to engage with new material and each other. In this way, the course fulfilled the goal of incorporating ideas based on a variety of student backgrounds in order to study important international issues.
Written by Hope Parker, Master of Arts in International Studies ‘20