PCH Staff Engagement at Nankai University, PR China
During the course of the summer, two members of Politics and Contemporary History were involved in teaching and lecturing at Nankai University, Tianjin, China. Dr Moritz Pieper presented a research paper at the Zhou Enlai School of Government, while Prof Alaric Searle delivered a four-week course on ‘Classic Works of British Historiography’ to undergraduates in the Faculty of History.
The title of Moritz’s talk was ‘Mapping Eurasia: Comparing the Competing Public Diplomacies of Russia’s “Greater Eurasia” and China’s “Belt and Road”’, which he delivered on 19 June. In his guest lecture, he presented a survey of the public diplomacies of China’s Belt and Road initiative and Russia’s vision of ‘Greater Eurasia’. Despite a level of economic competition between the operating modes of the economic land corridors envisioned under China’s ‘new Silk Road’ initiative and the Russian-dominated Eurasian Economic Union, Moritz argued, a convergence of interests between Russia and China on the global plane might temper the effects of regional rivalry.