The Letter of the Month

What seemed to be absolutely unrealistic until last year has been realised this month: Two members representing our international network took part at the 3rd Biennale of the CHINA-EUROPE-FORUM in HONG KONG from July 7th to 14th.

This forum established a new type of dialogue from european civil society to chinese society. It offers the unique opportunity to embrace the common challenges by strengthening the dialogue within the respective societies and by making best use of the diversity of cultures.

Representants from all social and socio-professional sectors meet regularly in numerous different workshops in order to discuss their specific topics. The results and experiences are merged in the forum every three years and they are reviewed in the overall spectrum of the challenges related to globalization.

At the previous Biennale held at Brussels in 2007, a small joint working group could already exchange informations with representatives of the Chinese Embassy about the principles of European and Chinese security policy. (Results can be read here).

Preparing the Forum in Hong Kong, Brigadier General (ret.) Patrice Mompeyssin from French Army and Colonel (ret.) Manfred Rosenberger from German Federal Forces contributed in the frame of Workshop 43a by bringing in their experience in the field of multinational military cooperation and european security and defense culture.

This workshop, organised by the Chinese Institute for European Studies within the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences, in an open and confidence-building atmosphere succeeded in elaborating a couple of common positions that afterwards have been introduced in the different working groups of the plenum assembled at the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong.

We take the opportunity of this Letter of the Month to inform our members and bring the positions on governance paradigms to discussion among our readers.

Maybe you’ll have the possibility to submit us your thoughts and proposals during summer break.

Because now, the main task will consist in making use of the ties established on working group level and in the frame of the Forum in order to bring chinese military in and engage an ongoing dialogue on the concept of human security and the place and the role of armed forces in New World Governance.

We are looking forward to a lively discussion wishing you relaxing summer holidays.