Email Share
Close
E-mail It

NOTE: Recipients' Email Address currently accepts only 5 email addresses separated by commas.

China Initiative

China Social Development Forum

As a fundamental component of its program, the HSPH China Initiative organizes the China Social Development Forum to discuss critical social policy issues with leading scholars and policy-makers in China.  As a global leader in knowledge creation and transfer, the Harvard School of Public Health has the capacity to help China effectively address major concerns in social sector development through collaborative research and communication.  The inaugural Forum was successfully held June 22-23, 2007 in Beijing with prominent leaders from Harvard, the Central Party School, and Tsinghua University and other Chinese and international organizations in attendance.

China Initiative (CI) currently has plans underway to host the second Social Forum in Boston in the Fall of 2009. The forum will focus on the intersection of the global economic crisis and the issue of social development, as it relates to China. CI has invited an array of US and Chinese scientists, scholars and senior government officials from China to participate in the 2009 forum. The forum is expected to be a highly engaging and extensively informative event, which will culminate in the publication of a book, highlighting a number of the Forums' presentations.

CSDF Group (CSDF_Group_Shot_edited2.jpg)

Objectives

  • To meet annually alternately in Boston and Beijing to develop a comprehensive understanding of the key social development issues in China, while also seeking to help inform China's public policy process by drawing on both Chinese and international perspectives and experiences. Each Forum focuses on a specific theme, and the major results of the commissioned studies are then discussed and disseminated. A policy briefing paper synthesizing major findings and recommendations from each Forum is delivered to China's top policy makers, and an edited volume of the Forum proceedings is published in both Chinese and English and then widely distributed.
  • To coordinate and support a series of inter-disciplinary studies on a select set of social development issues in China. These studies will be carried out by Harvard faculties, research fellows, and students in collaboration with leading Chinese scholars. Major issues to be studied include (but are not limited to):
    • the relationship between economic and social development;
    • governance structure for social development;
    • achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs);
    • aging society and social security;
    • controlling major public health risks, including nutrition, environmental, and behavioral risks;
    • health care system reforms;
    • human capital and social capital;
    • corporate social responsibilities;
    • leadership development.