 on where you are. My name is Steve Seng. I am director of the China Institute at Sourced. Let me welcome you all to this webinar on the politics of expertise in China. We have an excellent speaker from China himself to take on this very important subject. And the speaker is Professor Xu Feng Zhu, who is a professor at Jinghua University, where he also serves us among other positions. The executive associate dean at the School of Public Policy and Management and as director of his own think tank is also the executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Development Goals there. He has a wide-ranging interest for research which includes public policy theories, science and technology policy, environment, and climate change, as well as governance in transitional China. Perhaps one could say that he is interested in nearly all the very important hot-button subjects that China will have to be dealing with that we will all be interested in knowing more. He is very widely published, both in terms of leading academic journals as well as in terms of books. He is author of five books and I will mention only the most recent two books. And they are the politics of expertise in China which came in 2019, which I think underpins the talk that he is going to give to us today. The other one is reform and opening and contemporary think tanks in China, which was released a year earlier in 2018 in Chinese. With that, let me hand over to Professor Zhu. But before Professor Zhu starts his presentation, just let me remind you that this event will be recorded and if you would like to ask any questions or make any comment, please use the Q&A box function at the bottom right hand side of your screen. When you raise a question, if you would like to raise it anonymously, you are welcomed to do so. But even then, please provide information about yourself so that I can pick and choose the questions more effectively, but your wish for anonymity will be respected. And after the webinar today, all questions and comments will be forwarded to the speaker after the event. So even if questions that are not being picked because of time pressure, they will still be put to the speaker. Now with that, Professor Zhu, the floor is yours. Thank you, Professor Stephen Tang. And thank you for the audience and thank the Soil China Institute for inviting me for this lecture. Actually, this institute, I published an article in China Quarterly on China Sting Test. I know that China Quarterly is the most famous Chinese study journal in the world. I'm very honored to be one of the authors of the journal. And also today is a very special day because today is a very test day. So when we set this lecture, I didn't realize that today is a very test day and a happy holiday and also especially for audience from China and from Asia countries because this is evening of the romantic day. So you are true love of the academic research. So I'm very excited for your coming. Now let me share my screen. So today's talk, I would like to talk about one of my books as Professor Tang said, The Politics of Expertise in China. First, let me introduce some of my publications. In 2009, I published my first book in Chinese, The China Sting Test, The Influence in the Policy Process. And three years later, I published an English book, The Rise of Sting Test in China. Both the book, I conducted a national questionnaire survey on China Sting Test to explore why their rise and why they how to achieve influence in the policy process in China. And then we did some case studies and I published a book about the public expert participation in policy changes. And the right one is the Korean version of this Chinese book. And then after I updated my cases and theories, I published this book, Politics of the Expertise in China. In this book, I explore four behavioral strategies of experts of China. And we use four cases, comparative cases, to demonstrate different cases, different behavioral patterns of Chinese experts in different scenarios, different policy change cases. And then this is my recent book, which one is the Chinese version and the English version. The English version is to be published in 2022, The Reform and Opening Up and The Sting Test in Contemporary China, published by Ramin University. So today's talk, I would like to talk some theoretical introduction and I will introduce three cases. Two of the cases are from my book, The New Type Rural Corporative Medical Care System and the New Urban Medical Care System. These two policy cases. And then the third one is the newly studied cases, experts in COVID-19, which one is I first introduced. And then we discussed some comparisons and theoretical thinking. So let's introduce. So this picture is the map of the policy process. What do you mean by the policy process? The policy process is why and how a policy was analyzed and designed. And there are different things of policy process. For example, problem definition. So what kind of problem happened? And then we defined this problem. And then initiating agenda, policy agenda, and then set the policy goals and policy instruments and implementation, and then policy evaluation. So there are different types of policy actors within central government and the local government and also social system. In the central system, like in China, like the central government, like the state council, the national people's congress, and the superior people's court, and the parties, and so on. And in local system, like local governments, local people's congress, and the central local relations are all factors related to the policy process. And in this talk, I would like to talk the social system, the experts or think-tests that participated in policy process. And also, there are other actors like mass media, entrepreneurs, or enterprises, and the social organizations, and even citizens. They can be active actors for the public policy. So we talked experts. What are experts? Experts are special policy-making participants who use their expertise to influence the decision-making process. They are not mass media. They are not enterprises. They are not NGOs. So they only have the resources expertise. And they are neutral. What they are doing is not like lobbying, and so on. They just give the expertise and advice to the decision-makers. And the experts include scientists, engineers, social science researchers, or think-tankers, and lawyers, and other practitioners. And also, Chinese experts are playing increasingly more important roles in policy changes with various behavioral strategies. And in this seminar, cases will be introduced to illustrate the different patterns of behavioral strategies of Chinese experts. So our question is, first, expert involvement is usually regarded as one of the courses of the policy changes. A lot of researchers focused on how policy change was influenced by experts. However, we don't know how the nature of policy changes, in turn, influence behavioral strategies and patterns of expert involvement. That's the reverse question, which we put expert involvement as dependent variable and policy change, nature of policy changes as independent variables. After over four decades of implementing reform, and since the end of 1970, what are the behavioral strategies of patterns of Chinese experts in the current decision-making system in mainland China? And why do Chinese experts tend to use different behavioral strategies in different policy change processes? So that's our question today. So let's talk about the structure of the decision-making authority at the central level in China. As we know, there are different tiers of the decision-makers. The first tier is the top leadership in the Chinese system, like top 25 to 35 leaders, preeminent leaders, and the generalists. And then super-ministerial units, when some policies and decisions comprehensive enough related with different ministries, the government will organize the super-ministerial units to coordinate different opinions and interests of ministries, like leading small groups and the party departments and the special committees to organize and to communicate and coordinate all the comprehensive policy issues. And then the ministries, like the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Science and Technology, and the National Developmental Reform Commission, NDRC, they are ministerial-level decision-makers, and then the departments, like bureaus and departments under the ministries. So what are experts in our theory? The theory is the nature of the policy change and the behavioral strategy of experts. So first, we assume that experts are neutral, interests are neutral. So if they are not neutral, they are stakeholders. So we don't know what they talk about because of their expertise or their personal interests. So if they are not neutral, they are not experts at all. They may be one of the members of the interest group. And the general speaking, Chinese experts favor directly influencing decision-makers rather than resort to the public opinion. Often experts decided to publicize their opinion because they are unsuccessful through direct channel to the decision-makers. Therefore, they leverage public opinion to oppose their influence. So the model, we have the two nature, two characteristics of the policy changes. The one is the loss embeddedness. The other is knowledge complexity. We will talk later, but it is noted that the policy changes have directions, which means different directions we have different stakeholders. And the policy A changed to policy B or policy A changed to policy C may have totally different stakeholders and beneficiaries and the losers because of different directions of policy changes. So let's elaborate different concepts of the characteristics of the policy changes. The first one is loss embeddedness. The basic meaning of expert, basic meaning of the embeddedness refers to whether a certain policy participant is a member of a key policy network. So the concept of loss embeddedness in the policy change refers to whether or not the stakeholders are closely tied to decision-makers. And also they are potential embedded losers in the direction of the policy change. That's a very complicated concept. So I would like to elaborate the concept. First, the stakeholders, there are different kind of stakeholders. We can classify the two by three, six types of stakeholders with potential interests and embeddedness in the network of policy makers. There are different kind of potential interests, potential loss, potential benefits or neutral. And then if someone is within the network of policy maker, so we call the strong embeddedness. And if they are outside of the policy-making networks, they are weak embeddedness. So therefore there are six types of policy actors. So we say that only embedded losers, they have willingness and ability to resist policy change. Other kinds of policy actors, neutral, they have a indifference with this policy. And the embedded winners, they are winners, so they will not resist the policy change. And then no embedded losers, winners, and neutral participants, they even though they want to resist the policy change, they have no ability, enough ability to resist the policy change because they are outside the policy networks. So we can talk about the different scenarios. For strong loose embeddedness, the suffering stakeholders is able to express objectives, objection to the policy maker and prevent the further development of the policy change. Therefore, when the loose embeddedness of an expert supported the policy change direction is strong, the relevant losers in the policy network have ability to find various ways to prevent expert suggestions from coming into play. Under such circumstances, experts have to resort to indirect channel to initiate and promote the policy agenda. Different in the contract policy change will be successful, successfully accepted by the stakeholders in the policy networks, or the stakeholders are unable to prevent the policy change from developing further. So when the loser lost embeddedness of the expert supported the policy change is weak, the expert policy change are free from much interference from embedded members of a policy network, or in some cases even win the support of the policy network members. So that's the first theory, the second dimension is knowledge complexity. Knowledge complexity in policy change refers the extent to which decision makers lack to lack the professional knowledge required by the making and the standard policy change. There are different aspects of the knowledge complexity like professionality, ambiguity, originality, and information asymmetry. So we can talk about the theory of knowledge complexity. A policy with higher knowledge complexity means that decision makers require more professional knowledge from experts when they select policy alternatives. Conversely, if a policy change has lower knowledge complexity, decision makers can likely make a decision maker by themselves. In this case, experts are unnecessary. So with these two dimensions, we can build a two by two model to explore behavioral strategies of experts. There are two dimensions. One is loss embeddedness, another one is knowledge complexity. When knowledge embeddedness is weak and the knowledge complexity is high, so the experts can easily influence the decision makers through direct channels because they are welcome. So the behavioral strategy is linear access. This is the basic behavioral strategy of expert connotation. However, if the loss embeddedness is strong, which means there are internal resistance from the decision making network and also the knowledge complexity is high, so the experts will meet resistance from the system. They cannot very easily influence the policy maker from direct channels. Therefore, they have to leverage a public opinion in mass media to initiate a policy agenda. And also because of the knowledge complexity, the decision makers still need the experts to give some expertise and advice. Therefore, after the policy agenda was set, the policy makers will still invite experts to give some advice. Therefore, the outside in enlightenment is this kind of behavioral strategies. And then the third one is loss embeddedness is weak and the knowledge complexity is low. So actually, the policy makers are not interested in inviting experts because the knowledge complexity is low. So when the policy experts want to influence the policies, they can raise the civic activism to initiate the public opinion and then to push the policy to change. However, finally, if the loss embeddedness is strong, and the knowledge and the knowledge complexity is low, so the experts are not welcome. So the model is locked out. So this is our model. So because of the limitation of time limitation, I can only propose, I can only introduce two cases. So let me talk cases. The first case is there are three cases. The first is new type of rural cooperative medical care system. The second is new urban medical care system. The final one is newly one is expert in COVID-19. All these three cases are medical care public health related policies as you make us so we can compare them with each other. So first is like the promotion of new type rural cooperative medical care system. Traditional rural cooperative medical care system began to decline after the implementation of reform and opening up in the late 1970s. By the end of 80s, only 4.8% of all villages in the country still practiced the cooperative medical care system. And in May 1997, the state council approved and forwarded development and optimization of rural cooperative medical care system. However, because of the lack of financial support from the central government, the rural cooperative medical care system failed through the end. So the situation improved remarkably when the new type of nationwide rural pilot cooperative medical care system was put into operation after the decision of the CPC central committee and the state council on further strengthening the public health work in rural area in 2002. So and after that, the opinion of established new rural cooperative medical care system forwarded by the central office of the state council were promulgated in 2003. This policy, the central government would provide a 10 R&B subsidy available to people in rural areas to each farmers who participated in the new type cooperative medical care system in central and the rural, in central and the western country, western China. And how and the experts, what's the expert behavior of the in the positive Chinese cases? Promoting the new type rural cooperative medical insurance cooperative medical system involved a lot of many government departments and like ministries. But in general, the promotion was beneficiary to ministry of health because of the system provide access to the numerous amount of financial funds and why other ministries and commissions were little interested in it. Therefore, we can see the ministry of health are very interested in to promote this policy. And a series of rural cooperative medical care system practice and experiments organized jointly by international organizations and a domestic research institute convinced that central government that the fully scale the implementation of such a system would be impossible without the financial input from the government. So we can find one crew on how expert activities influence the government decision from the collections of expert participation in these programs. In 2001, the Asia Development Bank engaged Harvard University Public Health School to study a public health security issue in China's rural area. And in July 2001, the National NDRC held an international symposium in Beijing and a report submitted to the meeting by three members of the research project. Harvard University, Liu Yuanli from Harvard University, Harvard Public Health School and Rao Keqin from the Health Statistics and Information Center of the Ministry of Health and Hu Shanlian, Public Health School in Fudan University, suggested that family bank purposes due to medical expenses amount for one third of the rural poverty. So this number is very serious. So this report was noticed by the then minister of health, Zhang Wenkang. And Zhang Wenkang approached Rao Keqin as we know. Rao Keqin is the think tanker under the Ministry of Health. So Rao Keqin and asked him to write a short report. Zhang Wenkang, the minister, sent the private envelope to the then Chinese president, Jiang Zemin. And Jiang was shocked and immediately demanded a verification of the report because he didn't believe that the number. So several days later, two researchers from the Policy Research Office of the CPC Central Committee interviewed Rao Keqin and asked him regarding the details and the data resources of the research. And in November 2001, the Economic Structuring Office of the State Council was officially charged by the research on the coordinated development of a new rural health policy in the country. So in 2002, driven by the Ministry of Health, China's first national conference on rural health care in Chinese modern history was held in Beijing. So in this, actually, this case, experts are successfully to put and influence the policy and the decision makers to promote the new policies. The lessons from the expert behaviors first is to promote or provide a feasible solution to complicated issues. The feasible solution is 10 RMB per person. So very feasible, very simple, but the whole scenario, whole policy was very complicated, involving 14 ministries and sent an internal report to senior leaders through main government agencies. So senior leader was the president and through the Ministry of Health. And of course, as we know, at that time, Zhang Mengkong was the private doctor of president. Therefore, they have personal connections between president and the Ministry of Health. And not immediately published the research findings contained this report to the public. So this is their strategy. So after that, the after the new policy was promulgated, the Ministry of Health established two teams, two think tanks, the one is technical direction team in 2003, and then upgraded to the new type rural cooperative medical care system center, research center in 2005. Okay, case two, new urban medical care system. From the beginning, in 1997, the direction of the central committee of CPC and the state council on health reform and development was promulgated to begin a full scale market oriented reform of their existing medical and health system. And then in 2000, in the year of 2000, the state council released a guidance guiding opinions on reform of the urban medical and health system with the objectives of establishing an urban medical and health system that meets the requirements of a socialist market economy. So what do you mean by the requirement of the socialist market economy? Because from the beginning before 1997, the Chinese urban medical care system, the key issue is how to reform the public hospitals, because at that time, hospitals are sponsored by the government. So the doctors have no sense to serve the to give services to the patients. Therefore, the unavailability of the hospitals of public medical services are main issues of the traditional urban medical care system. Therefore, the reform of the market economy means that put the public hospitals to the market and the public finance cuts the support to the public hospitals and let the public hospitals to compete with each other in the market. After the reform, the situation increasingly deteriorated. The public suffered from increasingly availability. This is a traditional issue and affordability of the medical services. From the beginning, the public only suffered from unavailability, but the price of the hospital was low. But after reform, unavailability is still there, but the affordability comes through. So in 2005, the research project on China's medical and health system reform was led by the researcher of the DRC of the Development Research Center of the State Council. The report finds that the reform, the health public, urban public health reform was basically unsuccessful. In the beginning, the research project published eight specific reports and one general report in an internal publication of the DRC in March 2005. And this publication, however, did not draw any attention of the decision makers because such conclusions match an opposing voice from within the government. Let's guess who will oppose these policy proposals or recommendations. Obviously, the Ministry of Health, they don't like this policy research because they, this research publicly criticized the policy that was incharged by the Ministry of Health. So, Ge Yen Feng released, finally, Ge Yen Feng released the research findings to the mass media in July 2005 and immediately triggering the outburst of public opinion. The Ministry of Health attempted to dodge the general concern of the public, but it's only in March more criticism. And nine months later, in 2006, the State Council decided to launch a new round of urban medical and health system reforms by initiating a policymaking agenda. Two months later, the State Council permitted 14 ministries and commissions to organize, to form an inter-ministeric, coordinated working small group for the deepening of the medical and health system reform, which I just mentioned, super-ministerial level organization to coordinate this reform. Because this policy is still very complicated, so the government desperately needed to rely on expert advice. So, after that, in October, of 2006, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee invited Professor Li Lin and the Deputy Director of the China Center for Economic Research of Beijing University and Professor Liu Jun, then Vice President of the Chinese Medical Doctors Association to deliver lectures to the members of the Bureau on foreign medical and health systems and on the development of the China's medical and health services. So, after that, in January 2007, the health system reform and working small group decided to engage seven domestic and foreign research institutes, including Peking University, Fuzan University, the DRC, the World Health Organization, Mackenzie & the Company, and the World Bank, to conduct independent and parallel design projects for health system reforms. Later on, Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University, Renmin University of China joined the design work and the totally nine formulated plans and competed with each other. So, in late May of the same year, the nine independent health system reform plans were evaluated by the State Council or by the small working small group. And in February 2008, a 10th plan was submitted to the State Council, formulated by the medical and health experts of the Division of Biology and Medicine of the Chinese Academic of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. So, all these plans share the same objectives of the providing safe, effective, convenient, and affordable medical and health services for the public and effectively mitigating the problem of the availability and unapprovalability of the medical system. So, the objective and the positive goals are the same, but the positive instruments are different. The expert opinions were roughly divided into two categories. One is a supply side, a supplier side, a nationwide basic medical security system. Another is a user side, a nationwide service medical insurance system. These two systems are with different logics. The first is the supplier side means the government sponsored public health and public hospital system. So, the public financial resources support the public hospitals, then lower the price of the medical and health services. And the other side and the other policy recommendation is user side, means the patients, the patient users are patients. Patients go to the market and to select the hospitals. Hospitals are competing with each other in the market and the price may be high, but the government resources, government and fiscal resources subsidize the insurance system to let the patients who can reimburse their price of the public health from the insurance system. So, these are the two different policy alternatives. Finally, when the state council published the medical and health system reform plan, it turns out to be a mix of the two categories based on the input of experts and general public. So, in Chinese term, it's a combination of supply side and user side, in the term of the official document. And then the state council and the CPC Central Committee and the state council released the opinion on deepening the health care system reform and the implementation plan of the recent priorities of the health care system reform in 2009 to 2011. So, this is the two cases from my book. So, we can see, compare these two cases. The first is like who are the experts and also experts position in the implementation of new type rural cooperative medical care system. The expert position is to increase government investment and extend the coverage of the rural cooperative medical care system. And then at the stage of agenda setting, influence decision making process through direct panel without immediately publicizing research findings. And then the ministry at the alternative selection ministry of health set up technical direction team and a research center for the policy. And for the policy of new urban medical and the rural urban medical and the health care system, the expert positions are or to reform the existing medical care system to make a medical service more accessible, available and affordable to the general public. From the beginning, the expert publicized publicized the research findings after direct channel failed. So then experts are invited, nine plus one projects teams are invited to give advice to the decision makers and they compete with each other to persuade the final decision makers. So they are different. We can see the logic is the one who likes this policy proposal. The ministry of health, from the first case, ministry of health liked this policy. So the expert can only use the direct channel to influence the policy. However, the second policy in the second policies, the ministry of health didn't like this policy and didn't like to be criticized. Therefore, the experts have to publicize the research findings because internal direct channels failed. Even though these experts have very strong connections with decision makers, they are DRC of the council. So the third case is the expert in COVID-19, which is very new. So let's refresh all this history of the dynamic. First, we record the city one is virus identification and research. On December 8th, 2019, a delivery man from the South China Sea food market went to the Wuhan central hospital. For the first time, he had had a fever for three days. And nine days later, Zhang Xiaochun deputy director of imaging department of the Zhongnan hospital in Wuhan observed the patient CT give and have a judgment, seems like a sauce. So he took the very seriously. And several days later, on December 31st, the first group of experts from the National Health Commission arrived in Wuhan. And on the same day, Wuhan Health Commission reported the unknown pneumonia for the first time. And in January 3rd, 2020, China informed the WHO, US, and other relevant countries and regional organizations of the epidemic information. So this is the first stage. And what the scientists do because Wuhan's virus research institute, they actively and quickly respond to the epidemic and to the epidemic and started to research on the virus. On January 2nd, 2020, the whole genome sequence of the normal coronavirus was confirmed. And three days later, the virus strain was isolated. And four days later, put the virus into national virus database, standardized storage completed. And two days later, the virus sequence was submitted to the WHO. So let's compare the 17 years ago, during the SARS, the expert and the scientists in all over the world spent four months to get the genome sequence of the SARS coronavirus. So currently, we have only days. So we can see the development of Chinese medical research abilities very promoted, improved. And also because of the virus sequence submitted to the world, WHO, so many foreign countries started to research vaccines before the further case of their own country. So that's the contribution of the Chinese scientists. And also, on February 11th, Director General of WHO announced at the press conference that the new coronavirus named COVID-19. Then we can see some kind of academic research. In March, Tsinghua Net collected more than 1,000 COVID-19 related papers, published different journals and academic platforms, including science, nature, and the lessons. So the statistics results show that because from the beginning of the pandemic, Chinese researchers contributed the most papers with total 412 papers. And followed by US, 223, and the UK, the 67 papers. And some key scientists' contribution. State 1 is the identification of the virus. And the State of two years, we got to know what happened and what the emergency plan and the isolation approach. So on January 20th, Zhong Nanshan first announced that the news of the human-to-human transmission. Because at that time, we firstly know that the virus can transmit the human-to-human. And three days later, at 10 a.m., January 23rd, Wuhan was closed and brought. One night before, the midnight, January 22nd, Professor Li Lanzhuan, the academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, reported based on the epidemic situation, Wuhan must be closely, must be closed immediately. He reported to the central government. Of course, this proposal and recommendation was not the only reason that the Chinese central government and the provincial government decided to close Wuhan. But she dared to report and dared to say her true thinking. And also, on February 3rd, according to the suggestion of Wang Chun, Wang Chun is the president of Beijing Union Medical College. He proposed a suggestion to construct a mobile cabin hospital. And this suggestion was very successful. They used museums and public buildings to be constructed mobile cabins. So this suggestion was learned by many countries afterward. So later, in early days of the epidemic, the National Health Commission set up an expert group according to the policy. The National General Emergency Plan of the public emergencies after SARS, updated after SARS. So they organized the expert group. 59 experts were included, led by Liang Wanyan, who is the director of the Institutional Reform Department of the National Health Commission. So within all these experts in the group, most of them are medical field, like respiration, severe diseases, infections, and so on. But there are also some kind of some social science professionals, like management, like Professor Xue Lan and Professor Feng Dongtao from Qinghua University, from our school, School of Policy and Management, and economics Liu Guo'en from Beijing University, and from law, medical law, from the Qinghua Law School, Wang Chunguang. And another stage is science communication to the public and the two doctors, because at that time, only very few scientists and experts know what happened about the coronavirus. So they must publicize what happened and how to treat and how to identify this pneumonia. So from the very beginning of the epidemic, the central steering group pulled experts to resources to provide whole chain guidelines to prevention, control, diagnosis, and treatment of the COVID-19. And at that time, the CDC helped write public prevention guidelines issued by the National Health Commission. And from February to March, the National COVID-19, COVID-19 Medical Treatment Team wrote and repeatedly revised the COVID-19 diagnosis and the treatment plan, totally seven versions up to now, and issued by the General Office of National Health Commission and the Office of National Administrative and Traditional Chinese Medicine. And also, the National Health Commission organized a lot of doctors and experts to jointly write the consensus of experts of personal protection in different regions of medical institutions during the COVID-19 epidemic. So actually, they just teach and communicate with doctors and general public to prevent themselves and to diagnose and treat the virus. And also, another case is Zhang Menghong, who is very famous now. He is an outstanding representative of science communication. He did a lot of public communication and public lectures and meetings to the public and to other peer experts to discuss how to protect and how to prevent and control the COVID-19. For example, in February, the electric version of Professor Zhang's advice on COVID-19 prevention control was launched. And also, Zhang made the first public speech on fighting COVID-19 entitled, How Human Beings Compact the Effective Diseases. And also, Zhang actually Zhang is not only for public communication, but he is the leader of Shanghai COVID-19 Medical Treatment Team. So, others, he gave a game lectures and educated people or persuaded, appealed the public to get a vaccine for the COVID-19. And also, science communication to foreign experts. So, because till May 2020, Chinese epidemic situation has been controlled. So, there were a lot of experience that should be shared to the international experts because in April and May, the COVID-19 began spread in different countries. So, Zhong Nanshan, Qiao Jie, Zhang Wenhong and other medical experts attended an online meeting to introduce Chinese experts, Chinese experience in fighting epidemic in English. At that time, Chinese public, general public got to know these scientists are very good at English. So, because these webinars are online to the public. And also, for example, another case, Zhong Nanshan deliver a video speech for an international conference to introduce Chinese experience and Chinese vaccines and also some delta variant and so on. And for us, like public management experts, because this is not only for medical policy decision making, but also there's a lot of other public decision making like emergency, like public health reform and so on. And the poverty is job and economic stimulation and so on. So, at that time, public and policy experts actively involved in policy advising. So, for example, in our school, more than 100 policy reports on anti-epidemic measures have been submitted to the central government and the departments from a lot of experts and policy expertise. And also, in Beijing University, there are also some policy suggestions and seminars. And a lot of public management experts actively did a lot of policy research during the pandemic. And also, we summarized the experience of Chinese measures and the message and publicized this experience in English and in Chinese to introduce the experience to the world. So the Institute for Contemporary China Studies and the Beijing University School of Health Policy and Management posted a release, the China Fight Against COVID-19 and then released in both in Chinese and English in terms of economic experts. Because at that time, you know, business are closed and a lot of employment and so on. The economic economy was deteriorated. So one economic expert sees the opportunity to promote and policies. One case is Ren Zepin. Ren is one of the first economists to advocate new type of infrastructure construction. So this term is not new, was not new. In 2018, the Central Economic Work Conference redefined the new type of the infrastructure construction as 5G, AI, industry, internet and the internet of things. Later strengthened the development of new next generation information infrastructure was included in the government working report in 2019. However, for more than one year, neither the concept of the NTIC nor its contents appeared to the official language and documents. So Ren Zepin, because of during the epidemic, traditional industry was greatly impacted. And however, the internet interest had a very big trend. So meanwhile, consuming demand was declining and why the economic growth need to turn to investment for new opportunity. Therefore, Ren Zepin's team started to market this concept of new type infrastructure construction again. So he published two recommendations, policy recommendations, analysis and policy recommendation on the impact of COVID-19 on China's economy and it's time to launch new type infrastructure building. Both report refers to the concept and generated a very big considerable response of the public. And then from February to March, the CPC Central Committee mentioned the concept again. And the new type of new infrastructure construction policy was decided by the National People's Congress National Meeting in May 2020. And also another case is Bangong who is a professor, economic professor. He published some articles in FUBOS that give some predictions and also fostering competence to the public. And he also calling for the global cooperation. So the state fall is a post-pandemic because after May 2020, the epidemic situation within China has been controlled quite. So we must reflect how to reform our system, especially our public health system. So the President Zepin presides over symposium with experts and scholars in Beijing. Experts on the symposium proposed to build a well-functioning public health system. Like some experts like Zhong Nanshan, Tong Zhaohui, Zhang Bo Li, Li Song, Xue Lan, Yang Wei Zhong, Wang, Cheng Guang, and a lot of experts are very famous during the pandemic. And as the experts give lectures, speeches, respectively, and to propose suggestions, another number of policies like to improve the system and the mechanism of major epidemic prevention and control and so on. So after that, President Xi Jinping awarded the recipients of national medals and the national honorable titles. Zhong Nanshan was awarded the medal of Republic by Zhang Bo Li, Zhang Dingyu, and Cheng Wei each received the national honorable title of the People's Hero. So this is the third case. Let's discuss, very interesting, because first we can compare different two doctors in China and in America. Zhong Nanshan is chief scientist of the epidemic in China, and Tony Fauci is the chief of the CDC, in America. But they are different, they have different, totally different experiences. For public opinion, in U.S., in the U.S., in April, Trump retreated with like a file, five Fauci and five Trump, they compete in Twitter. And the White House denied the congressional request for Dr. Fauci's testimony. And in China, so, you know, Zhong Nanshan was very popular. So Zhong Nanshan in social media weibo is very popular and official activities, he attended a lot of activities online. I think if we could sort of run it very quickly, so that there's a bit of time for discussion, we have only a few minutes left. Okay, one point. Okay, no problem. So as we can see, they Fauci and Zhong Nanshan, they have different experiences in media and in official, you know, Zhong Nanshan was awarded medical of republic. And finally, we believe that anti like a scientist and intellectualism was a thing in the Trump era. But it turns out that in Biden era, era was not the rescue because just two weeks ago, the public health experts say that cases of new Omicron variant was have peak. So you must have awareness and but the people are rarely in Washington DC and opposed and accused of killing people. So this picture is, you know, this is your Fauci, like a Nazism. Okay, so let's compare a different like a political situation and media ecology between China and the US, very interesting. And we can compare other like a natural science and social sciences in China. So the government and the media, they are different to the government and to media. They are different strategies. So the last slide. So different in different stages, different science, scientists and social scientists, they have appeared different at different stages and have different, have different behavior strategies. Okay, so that's all my presentation and any questions and comments are welcome. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Xu Feng. Professor Zhu, I am sorry that I rushed you towards the end, but we do need to allow for time for discussions. There are already two questions in the Q&A box. I would encourage other people to put in their questions. But let me start off by asking you the first questions. At the beginning, when you put up your first chart in terms of this organization structure of how inference are being exercised, there is no mention of the party at all. Nowhere in the charts does the word party exist. Now we are at a time when General Secretary Xi Jinping has made it very, very clear. Matters not whether it's North, Southeast West or the center or in any sphere of work, the party leads everything. So where does the party come in in your structure? Does the party not matter at all? Or does the party matter as Xi Jinping says that it must? Okay, it is a very good question. Are you mentioning this picture? First, the party exists in here. Pre-eliminated leaders are top 25 to 35 leaders, are all party leaders like Xi Jinping, like other premiers are all here. So this circle, maybe this circle is like a political bureau and some elders and some general things, general members. And also you can see this is a party department. This is also a party. So actually, party is very important. And also in my cases, if you notice that all the important documents, policies are released both by party central committee and the state council. So this very important case is the decision of the central committee of the CPC. CPC means central committee of China and the state council. State council is the government and the CPC is the party. So actually, party always exists in the policy-making system. Yes. Okay, let's get on with the questions from the participants. The first question comes from our colleague, Gary Swartz, Professor Swartz, who is very appreciative of your wonderful presentation. And he would like to ask you to elaborate your construct of knowledge complexity. He thinks it has a lot to do with Nobel laureates, Herbert Simons, bounded rationality concept, as it relates to the intellectual limitations of policy makers. Would you like to do that? Yeah, this is a very good question and a deep question. First, yes. I'm not hearing you. Yes. First, let me introduce my basic assumption of our analysis. Gary's question is related with rational decision-making or bounded rational decision-making, which means the decision makers, they have their own knowledge and they have their own calculation to different policy alternatives. But in my structure of my research, policy makers are not like they haven't their own interests or priorities. So they are only the neutral. So in our scenario, policy makers are like judges, co-ordinating different interest groups and different expert suggestions. And they just balance and to pick one like best solutions, which means the best, not the like the rational or bounded rational choice, but the balanced within different stakeholders and catch the maximized support from the stakeholders. So this is a totally different scenario or assumption structure of the Simons bounded rational choice or others. So within us, maybe it's more like our analysis is more like a political bureaucratic system, not the rational decision-making system. So this is the basic assumption of our analysis. For Simons theory, the rational decision-making means the government is a one rational decision maker. But in our research, in our analysis, the government can be divided different parts, different bureaus, bureaucracies and also different opinions, stakeholders, they have different opinions. So the final decision makers who release the final documents are judge. They are not the like a rational choice, a rational decision maker. That's all my response. Okay, thank you. Next question comes from Nick Sunding from the University of Newcastle. And Nick would like to ask, well, he says that you have briefly covered China's think tanks international roles, but you mostly focus on their domestic roles. Would you mind introducing the dynamics and key drivers operating in China's think Chinese think tanks, international roles? Yeah, it's a very good question. Actually, I'm writing an article about the Chinese think tanks in the globalized world. So first, we must separately to kind of policies. The one is foreign policy. Another one is domestic policy. And the domestic policies so foreign policy is an obvious approach suggests that some policies to foreign policy decision makers and they can play a role about the international community. This is obvious. But for domestic policies, they are also they also have some international roles domestically, because for example, for example, because China is now is big enough to influence internationally with the domestic policy, for example, if you if you are expert, you are an expert who proposed to the central government to like fiscal policies or monetary policies, like a release to print more MNB to currency policies. Sometimes we call that this is domestic policy or economic policies. But obviously, the currency policy or fiscal policies, they have externality to other countries. You know, therefore, Chinese expert Chinese think tanks, even though they only focus on domestic policies, they have international impacts with that. In that scenario, they must consider the international impact when they propose a domestic policy. You know, so they must consider both domestically and internationally. So this is another one. I guess your question is related to another one is like something like international communication or track to diplomacy. So this is actually this mean this is actually this is something like the first category of foreign policy, foreign policy, because track to track one part diplomacy means government to government of diplomacy. And think tank to think tank expert expert diplomacy means expert can communicate with their peers of foreign countries from foreign country and communicate a policy. And then they submit to the their personal suggestion to their own authority and let the government to meet. So this is their track to track to diplomacy. So actually, what I what I emphasize is domestic policy has still impact on international community. Thank you. Okay, there's a new question that came in, which is a kind of follow up on this point about China's international roles of Chinese think tanks. And this come from Miriam Guo. And should like to ask you to share some of your insights on Chinese influence on global environmental and climate governance. More specifically, how has Chinese think tankers been able to influence the concept of quote, ecological civilization and of quote, and is further implementation. For example, the promotion of ecological and mining practice in the Baron Road Initiative. Thank you. Thank you, Miriam Guo. I guess you are the expert or student in global government, environmental or and climate governance. Actually, yeah, first, international global environmental and climate governance is one type of global governance, you know, and global governance as one type of like something like a foreign policy, but not pure, not pure foreign policy, because foreign policy is in charge of the by the foreign minister. But for global governance, there are some expert, specific expertise with some disciplines, something like environmental and climate change issues. First, I suggest you to refer one article published in the Journal of Contemporary China, maybe three or four or five years ago, and German expert, whose name is App, App, APP. He did a very wonderful research on the expert of Chinese climate change, which, you know, there are, if you know the global governance, there are five aspects of climate governance, mitigation, mitigation, something, mitigation, let me remind, technical transfer, capacity building, mitigation, adaptation, and financial support, something, mechanism, financial mechanism five. So every aspect, there are a lot of different experts involving in different parts of the climate governance in China, Chinese expert. And these experts, first, they help the Chinese government, especially Xi Zenghua, who is the chief negotiator of the climate negotiator. They support the chief negotiators to dialogue and bargain in the COP26 or so on, Copenhagen and Paris agreement. All the round of the UN climate summit, a lot of experts were followed with Xi Zenghua and their team. So this is the, maybe obviously, these experts are very important. Another one is internally and domestically, because as we know that last year, the Chinese government announced that the 2030 and the 2060 carbon peak and the carbon neutrality strategy. So a lot of things must do because domestically, because the international commitment, this is the international global governance issue, but how to localize the international commitment is a very big issue. So a lot of experts are researching on how to meet the commitment of the 2060 carbon neutrality strategy. So this is a huge body of the expert. So this is maybe the first question. Another question is eco-civilization. So I mean, eco-civilization is a very Chinese style concept, you know, because the first mentioned this concept is in 2007, in the like 16th or 17th national congress of CPC national congress. And then because of this civil eco-civilization, eco-civilization, something like the SDG, Sustainable Development Goals in national United Nations concept. So actually, for example, because eco-civilization and SDG are quite similar. So a lot of experts connect the concept of eco-civilization with the Sustainable Development Goals, then they promote a lot of processes. Domestically, they use a term of eco-civilization, but internationally, they use a term of SDGs. So that's the strategy of the experts. This is because the Chinese language and the international language are different. So this is what I want to say. And the Bell Road Initiative, yes, like the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, they have a coalition of green development of the Bell Road Initiative. And also, every sandwich like the Bell Road Initiative sandwich last year is to the first year of 2017. The second one is 2019, but 2021 was suspended. And it is supposed to, this summit was, is supposed to held, to be held in maybe May in 2022, maybe in spring or summer. They will release a lot of policy reports on green development of Bell Road Initiative. So we'll see. So a lot of experts participated in this green development of BBI. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Professor Zhu. We are now at 232. So we have run out of time. And let me thank you and thank everybody for this very thoughtful and insightful webinar that we have. And please be sure that for those of you who have raised questions that I have not managed to put to Professor Zhu, your questions will be sent on to him. And I apologize for not being able to fit in your questions to him for an immediate response. And with that, let me just thank you all again and hope to see some of you at our regular webinar next week. Goodbye. Thank you.