The Global China Connection (GCC) hosted its first-ever symposium this Saturday, drawing five professors from several different universities to speak about current environmental issues in China. The conference, entitled “A Snapshot of Environmental Challenges,” attracted over 50 students, parents and alumni.
“This is the first [time] we’ve had a symposium of this caliber,” GCC Vice President Ben Zhang said. “There is a lot of room for improvement, but for our first efforts, it was a pretty great start.”
Zhang started planning and organizing the symposium last fall. All the professors lectured about their research pertaining to China’s environmental track record, addressing issues ranging from sustainable offshore energy to an increasing emphasis on urbanization in the world’s most populous country.
The symposium’s keynote speaker was Professor John Groopman from the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Groopman, of the Environmental Health Sciences Department, focused primarily on Alfatoxin, a type of liver cancer that is caused by chemicals released into the air in China.
“What was really interesting was that he didn’t only focus on scientific issues but also related [them] back to quality of life in China,” Zhang said. “This is not only a Chinese problem, but something that affects people globally.”
In his lecture, Groopman analyzed patterns and trends in China. Although he did not offer solutions, he highlighted the fact that people who live in extremely polluted northern areas of China have a life expectancy five years lower than that of people in the rest of the country.
Professor Erle Ellis of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County was another notable speaker at the symposium. Ellis lectured on the long-term ecological changes happening in Chinese villages as urbanization occurs.
Contrary to popular opinion, Ellis argued that people in cities live more efficiently and use fewer resources per capita than those in rural areas. Furthermore, he proposed that the Chinese citizens’ continual migration toward urban life will translate into positive environmental statistics in the years to come.
Hopkins Professor Erica Schoenberger, who has a joint appointment from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Anthropology, discussed why capitalism might be good for the environment and how the economy factors into China’s environmental record.
Schoenberger explained that most environmental problems are caused by humans. She said that human problems are social problems, and, in solving them, it all comes down to the supply and demand curves and incentives.
“My idea is to use capitalism to control the environment,” Schoenberger said.
Tabitha Grace Mallory, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, specialized in international relations and China’s foreign and environmental policies. She discussed China and the Global Marine environment.
The final speaker was Professor Xi Liu from Harvard University. Liu discussed the integration of offshore wind power to stabilize China’s electrical supply as its demand for energy grows along with its population.
The symposium recruited speakers through connections in the field. The conference was co-sponsored by Hopkins’s Earth and Planetary Science Department, the East Asian Studies Program, the Inter-Asian Council and The Hopkins Environment, Energy, Sustainability and Health Institute (E2SHI).
“About 80 percent of the work we did was what I would call ‘brute force,’ just googling every possible name and seeing what sticks,” Zhang said. “But when we started looking last November, we contacted these different organizations, and they helped sponsor the event and supplied several of our speakers.”
Although Zhang said he thought the event was an overall success, he acknowledged that GCC ran into several problems along the way.
“The symposium cost us a lot of money,” he said. “In the future, we might make the registration process more streamlined and possibly impose a fee. Although fewer people may register, a much higher percentage of those who do will show up.”
The GCC also struggled with attendance, as the symposium coincided with many events that took place during Homecoming weekend.
“[Hosting] it on Alumni Weekend was both an advantage and disadvantage,” Zhang said. “A lot of events were going on on campus, but a lot of alumni with their kids and current students with their parents showed up spontaneously as well.”
Despite several monetary and popularity setbacks, Zhang hopes the symposium will grow into an annual event in years to come.
“In the future, we want to organize it with other colleges in the area [and] invite other GCC chapters,” Zhang said.
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