As a think-tank, we have teams of scholars and researchers who work hard to deliver quality analyses on global phenomena. Once these reports are completed, they are circulated for legislation & policy and business consultation. Listed below are our projects in the process of completion.
FOR COMPLETED ISSUES, PLEASE REFER TO OUR "PREVIOUS RESEARCH PROJECTS AND REPORT PAGE" UNDER THE CONSULTATION TAB
FOR HUMAN RIGHTS-RELATED PROJECTS, PLEASE REFER TO THE PAGE HERE
FOR CSR RELATED PROJECTS, PLEASE REFER TO THE PAGE HERE
Since China’s Belt and Road Initiative was first proposed to the global community in 2013, it has been promised as a vehicle to drive the global economy and promote connectivity among BRI partner countries.
Under the BRI framework, issues such as trade and investment, labor, environment, geopolitics, technology under global infrastructure, and so on face new challenges and require more open dialogues and exchanges among different sectors and regions. Compared to other regional trade blocs, the BRI has the opportunity to overcome the flaws of closed-door talks and include the most significant and relevant stakeholders at the negotiation table to ensure the benefits and interests of all parties involved and that they are appropriately addressed and promote better global governance.
While governance mechanism is a critical matter for transnational and multi-sector infrastructure projects like the BRI projects, it is usually related to the overall planning, implementation, and management of the project and its long-term effects on all relevant stakeholders. In practice, the institutional arrangement among the rights, responsibilities, and interests of the project stakeholders is a real governance challenge. Existing academic theories, including relational contract governance, formal contract governance, and collaborative governance, cannot effectively facilitate stakeholder engagement, and optimize their relationships with flexible coordination while avoiding conflicts and reducing costs and uncertainties. By examining the current BRI projects, this research project aims to propose an inclusive governance mechanism, which is a four-quadrant governance model with a formal institutional arrangement among government, enterprise, IGO and NGO actors, through the use of inclusive negotiation as a method, to empower all relevant stakeholders to participate in the dynamic process of the project governance, and eventually realize the long-term project governance goals.
The Chinese government is currently striving to establish a social credit system nationwide to ensure sound and healthy social and economic development. The construction of a social credit system in China is an important method aimed at perfecting the socialist market economy system and innovating social governance. The 12th Five-Year Planning Outline of the Economic and Social Development put forward the overall requirement of “accelerating the construction of a social credit system.” One main principle for social credit system construction is to progressively establish and complete credit law and regulation systems.
It has been widely accepted that minority rights are individual and collective rights through which minority individuals and groups are entitled to enjoy their own culture, to use their own language, to profess and practice their own religion, to have the right to freedom of expression and assembly, to have equal opportunities to education and employment, and to enjoy full participation in public life. Yet when it comes to global and local governance, on the one hand, gaps always exist between international consensus and local scenarios, between legislation and enforcement, and between national sovereign and international judiciary (or public judiciary); on the other hand, issues such as the change of identities based on gender, political views, religion and beliefs, or citizenship status and new frameworks and definition of marginalized groups could also trigger a marginalized mindset or reality for individuals and groups which eventually leads to minority rights practice. These issues create increasing needs for a better understanding of the classic and emerging issues regarding minority rights and for further developing the existing theories and frameworks.
With this project, we aim to examine various issues in the current legal framework and best practices in implementing minority rights under the broader political and legal movement for greater inclusion of and protection for minority groups and marginalized groups; review whether all stakeholders, including governments, IGOs, and NGOs have played their expected or desired roles; and reflect on the wider implications of pursuing human rights and justice for minorities through legal empowerment. We look at the circumstances in Xinjiang, China, issues related to business and human rights, and invite exchanges of perspectives and insights from critical stakeholders, scholars, and human rights experts that are theory-based, policy-oriented, and practice-based.