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**Thematic Outline of the first CCTR Conference
The theme of our first conference is ˇ§Chinese people on the move.ˇ¨ In
particular, we will focus on the transnational flow of human capital in
and out of Greater China. Broad conceptual frameworks may be drawn from
migration studies, education/brain drain research, the role of human
capital in national development, the role of individuals in technology
transfer, or other literatures that link the flow of people to broad
issues of technical, economic and political development.
Some questions we wish to address include: What drives the movement of
professional and managerial Chinese, and their capital, knowledge and
skills across borders or from one territory to another? To what extent
do family, job opportunities, social networks, and government policy
influence their movement? Are Chinese different from Indians, Jews and
other migratory peoples, and if so, how? What are the problems faced by
educated migrants, in terms of ethnic identity and cultural or social
integration? How do/don't migrants maintain their identity and still
fit into local society? What transnational linkages promote these
population flows? How do the flows of Chinese in/out of the mainland,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, North America and Australia compare? What
are the economic costs and benefits to the various countries and regions
of this flow of people? What role do government regulations play in
promoting or complicating this population flow?
Thus, topics we think would be of interest include: the flow of
Taiwanese onto the mainland; efforts of governments in Greater China to
encourage returnees; the flow of mainlanders to Canada, the US, Europe
or other parts of the world; the ˇ§brain drainˇ¨ and the ˇ§reverse brain
drain;ˇ¨ pressures on the Hong Kongˇ¦s middle class or university
graduates to take jobs on the mainland; retirement communities of Hong
Kong elderly in Shenzhen; the movement of corporate headquarters around
the region; the pull of human resources from Hong Kong to Shanghai. We
are, however, open to other topics related to this theme.
**Funding for Participants
We will cover round-trip economy airfare and provide accommodation for
overseas participants. To acknowledge research originality and
conference participation, we will award participants HKD 2,000 (around
USD250) for the submission of a completed conference paper. We also
propose to give a second HKD 2,000 (around USD250) for the final
submission of an edited paper, which we will use in a conference volume.
However, not all
conference papers will necessarily be used in the edited volume that we
hope to produce from the conference. We will establish a conference
committee that will evaluate the revised papers.
Interested parties please send in your paper proposal or abstract to Ms
Linda Tjia, Administrative Officer of the Center on China's
Transnational Relations by *31 November 2004*. The proposal or abstract
should
summarize the argument of the paper, the sources on which it is based,
and its relationship to the existing literature. |