The event, which is in its ninth year, was organized in conjunction with the Research Center for Chinese Politics and Business and the East Asian Studies Center.
The China Town Hall was sponsored by the National Committee for U.S.-China Relations. The committee organized a live stream of a national panel discussion for 79 smaller groups to watch throughout the U.S. and China.
“The idea is that maybe this way the discussion will reach a much larger audience than a regular forum or colloquium will,” said Roy Hooper, assistant director for the RCCPB.
The topic of this year’s Town Hall was China’s foreign direct investment in the U.S. The growth of foreign direct investment in the U.S. from China has been exponential over the last thirty years, Joyce Man, director of the RCCPB, said.
“We created this in the belief that U.S.-China relations are the primary relationships in the 21st century and that building that relationship is the key to peace and stability throughout the world,” Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee for U.S.-China Relations, said during the national forum.
Orlins led the national discussion, which featured Robert Rubin, secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton, Daniel Rosen, a founding partner of economic research firm Rhodium Group, and Sheldon Day, mayor of Thomasville, Alabama, where he oversaw the introduction of a Chinese copper tubing plant.
The national forum also took questions from viewers at the local events through Twitter. Questions posted with the hashtag #CTH15 were fielded by the forum members after the initial discussion led by Orlins.
“There has been a lot of wariness from both countries with the development of this economic relationship,” Rubin said in the national forum. “But both the U.S. and China would benefit in their relationship and economically by addressing the complaints the other nation has.”
Each local event featured not only the streaming of the national forum, but also local speakers. At the IU event, Fu Jin and Zhang Jian, both from Peking University in China, as well as Russell Menyhart, from Indianapolis law firm, Taft, Stettinius and Hollister LLP, spoke to an audience of students and faculty. These speakers are funded by the national committee.
“Before China opened up their economy to the rest of the world, it had one fifth of the population of the world but was performing extraordinarily badly,” Fu said in his address at IU. “The opening up of direct foreign investment and the technology development frontier has brought dramatic growth.”
Despite negative perceptions many Americans have about Chinese foreign investment, the point is to create a strong economy in the long term for both countries, Fu said.
The three local speakers conducted a brief question and answer session after their presentations. Questions ranged from the topic of general relationships between the two countries to the specifics of the types of companies investing in the U.S..
“My international business professor recommended I come tonight, and I think this topic is very interesting and important for my future,” Mitsuhiro Ito, a second-year graduate student, said.
The event is organized each year in the hopes of further developing the same relationships between individuals from the U.S. and China that the forum analyzes, Hooper said.
