On 14 December 2022, UNU will host “The China Question: International Student Mobility and Global Research Collaboration in an Era of Hardening Geopolitics”, a conversation with Mr Jo Johnson, President’s Professorial Fellow at King’s College, London and Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. This event will start at 18:30 in the 1F Annex Space at UNU Headquarters in Tokyo.
For decades, Chinese students have made up the dominant percentage of international students at US universities. A large number of Chinese students have also come to Japan. In recent years, however, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, their enrollment in the US has steeply dropped. Meanwhile, UK universities are seeing a resurgence of Chinese applicants, while EU applicants decline.
As the world weathers a period of hardening geopolitics and an increasingly precarious economic situation, how will these factors reshape perceptions of international education? How will China’s influence in the international education market block or open international opportunities for students from the Global South?
Mr Johnson will join UNU Rector David Malone to discuss China’s shifting approach to international education and the potential impacts this will have on global knowledge transfer, research collaboration, and innovation.
The UNU Conversation Series aims to foster audience participation; you are encouraged to engage with the speakers during the conversation and at the reception that will follow, where all audience members are invited to enjoy hors d’oeuvres and drinks while exchanging ideas and making new contacts
Please note that this event will be in English. Advance registration (by 13 December) is required. Please click on the REGISTER button above to access the online registration page.
About the speaker
Jo Johnson is President’s Professorial Fellow at King’s College London and a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is Chairman International of ApplyBoard, the world’s leading platform for international student recruitment, and also Chairman of Access Creative, the largest independent provider of further education and specialist training for the creative industries in the UK. Mr Johnson is a Governor of the Ditchley Foundation, a Member of the Council of the Dyson Institute for Engineering and Technology, and a Fellow of Birkbeck College, University of London.
Elected to Parliament three times, Mr Johnson represented the London constituency of Orpington in the House of Commons between 2010–2019. He served in the UK Government under three Prime Ministers in a number of roles, including as Head of the Number 10 Downing Street Policy Unit, and Minister of State, attending Cabinet, for Universities, Science and Innovation. He is now a Member of the House of Lords in the UK Parliament and a Member of the Privy Council. In his early career, he was a journalist, working for 13 years for the Financial Times as Paris Correspondent, South Asia Bureau Chief, Head of Lex, and Associate Editor.
