On April 10th, a group of 3 members led by Stephan Pantekoek, the Representative Office Director of the FES at Shanghai, visited Shanghai Administration Institute (the Institute) to consult on the Sino-German Academic Symposium to be held by the Institute and the FES in the second half of this year. GUO Qingsong, the Vice President of the Institute presided over the meeting.

Mr. GUO welcomed Mr. Pantekoek and his group，and said that he hoped the face-to-face consultations with each other would help both sides understand each others needs and concerns and thus ensure the success of the Sino-German Academic Symposium. Mr. GUO pointed out that recent years have seen a new trend in the game between globalization and counter-globalization. The process of globalization over the past decades has shown that it concerns not only the economy and the market, but also the social problems and the outlooks on governance. The governance systems and social policies of different countries have had different response to the global spread of social problems such as poverty, immigration, aging, disease and conflict. The opportunities and challenges hidden there have provided a new impetus for the local governments to change their governance mechanism and social policies. We hope that China and Germany could learn from each other in terms of local governance.

Mr. Pantekoek agreed what Mr. GUO said. He said that Germany has been focusing on a series of social problems such as housing for the poor, the pension system and the admission to nurseries. He hoped that the agenda of the Symposium would be as detailed as possible. Besides the theme of each sub-topic, the key words or the concrete issues to be discussed under each sub-topic should also be given, plus the number of speakers from both sides so that the German side may have better understanding.

After consultations, the two sides initially agreed that the Symposium will be held in mid-September this year, focusing on the theme of local governance and social policy innovation from a global perspective.

The two sides also discussed some other points.