China Now: Key Questions in Debate

'Chinese New Year Dragon' by 'Donnaphoto' on flickr

UTS's China Research Centre, in association with the City of Sydney Chinese New Year Festival, invites you to join them for this debate featuring guest speakers Jenny Haywood-Jones (The Lowy Institute), Christian Edwards (Xinhua), and community historian Helen Fong. In what will be a lively evening, China scholars, industry professionals and media experts discuss key questions on development, aid and migration in China.

The first conversation, between the China Research Centre’s Dr Lai-Ha Chan and the Lowy Institute’s Director of The Myer Foundation Melanesia Program, Jenny Haywood-Jones, looks at the China’s growing role in development and aid.

While in the second discussion between Xinhua’s Australia Correspondent, Christian Edwards, Community Historian Helen Fong, and Dr Graeme Smith of the China Research Centre, the focus will shift to the question of China’s role in global migration.
 
Jenny Hayward-Jones is Director of The Myer Foundation Melanesia Program at the Lowy Institute. Prior to joining the Lowy Institute Jenny was an officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for thirteen years, serving in the Australian missions in Port Vila and in Ankara, where she was Deputy Head of Mission from 2004 to 2007. She worked as Policy Adviser to the Special Coordinator of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands from its inception in July 2003 and in 2004 and was a member of the election monitoring delegation in Solomon Islands in 2001. Jenny holds a BA (Hons) in political science from Macquarie University and her Masters thesis for Monash University focused on governance and political change in Vanuatu.

Christian Edwards left a Masters in Journalism at the UTS Australian Centre for Independent Journalism to work as a Producer for the Online Media Group in 2000. He travelled to China where he spent almost seven years working in media and the arts. Before becoming the first Australian to join the China National Theatre Company in 2008, he wrote television series in Dalian (2002), ran the nightly 'Guangdong Report' for GDTV in Guangzhou (2003-2005) and was the Executive Publisher of China International Business magazine in Beijing (2006-2007). A fluent French and self-taught Mandarin speaker, Christian has written and consulted for Agence France Presse (AFP), the New Express Daily and numerous international media and arts organisations. He is currently a Senior Correspondent for the Xinhua News Agency and the newly launched CNC World and regularly consults on Shakespeare in Theatre and on contemporary Chinese media. Christian lives in Sydney with wife Caroline and one year old daughter, Mathilde.
 
Helen Fong has worked as a book editor (Longman Cheshire and McGraw-Hill), an arts administrator (including the Australia Council for the Arts) and executive officer for a teachers’ professional organisation. In 1974 Helen and three others co-founded ACCA (the Australian Chinese Community Association), the first representative Chinese organisation in NSW. Helen is currently the historian of the Sze Yup Kwan Ti Temple in Glebe. She is also editing the memoirs of her father, Kip Fong, who came to Australia from China in 1940 and was awarded an OAM after 30 years of voluntary community service. Helen has enrolled in the Master of Creative Arts program at UTS in 2012, and is working on a book about the history of Chinese community experience in Sydney since the 1890s.