Prof.WANG attended the ECREA Pre-conference "The 'New Silk Road' - Flow and Counterflow of Information between Europe and China", held on Oct. 30 to 31, 2018, at the Universita della Svizzera italiana (USI), Campus Lugano, Switzerland.

Conference - The "New Silk Road" - Flow and Counterflow of Information between Europe and China?

Rationale

The “New Silk Road”, or in the Chinese official discourse, the “Belt & Road initiative” (formerly called One Belt One Road 一带一路) was launched in 2013 with a confirmed concrete interest from Beijing to reconnect China with Europe and to establish different levels of cooperation with European partners. It has been widely recognized by the West as the Chinese president Xi Jinping’s global ambition of centralizing China as the leading force for the World Economy and Globalization as well as China’s greater expansion of Soft Power.  So far, discussions about the New Silk Road and its relationship with Europe (i.e. European Union) have been mainly conducted in the field of political (Casarini, 2015; var der Putten and all, 2016, Fardella, 2016) and economic (Aoyama, 2016; Chen, 2016, Lin, 2015) studies. Much less attention has been paid from the media and communication perspective, despite the increasing importance of a better mutual understanding between different European and Chinese stakeholders on different levels under the Belt & Road framework.

This preconference is designed to fill in this gap by bringing scholars in media, communication and culture studies to join the discussion about the “New Silk Road” from Europe and China. On one hand, it recalls to the ancient Silk Road that initiated the first flow of communication and exchange in goods and culture between the Roman and Chinese empires. On the other hand, it opens windows for discussions on the current flow of a mix of acceptance—resistance, cooperation—dispute, and agreement—disagreement related to the New Silk Road between the two continents. If in 120 BCE the flow of information was launched in the West (Europe), at the present stage it starts from the East (China). We believe that this specific topic will contribute to the main theme of ECREA 2018 by providing a contribution to frame Centers (from Europe focus to China focus) and Peripheries.

Professor WANG presented his paper "Bridging the Gap of Perception. An Empirical Study of the Acceptance of Conceptual Metaphors of the "Belt and Road Initiative" in Chinese and European Media Discourse" at the conference.

About the programme of the conference, please see the attached file below (2018-10-17):