Talking Across Cultures

Tuesday, October, 3rd, 2006, 6 pm
The Boardroom
University of Westminster
309 Regent Street,
London W1B 2UW
Nearest tube Oxford Street ( Map )

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• Overview: here
• Abstracts: here
• About the Speakers: I.l Hilton - B. Hogge - C. Henderson
• About Chinadialogue.net

Our guest speakers will be Isabel Hilton, Becky Hogge, and Caspar Henderson from the independent online media platform Chinadialogue.net. Launched in June 2006, China Dialogue is designed to facilitate conversation between Chinese and English speakers on the environment.

China is growing fast and, as it grows, it is faced with urgent environmental challenges. Environmental costs may account for 10 per cent of China's GDP and the effects of pollution, desertification and climate change are already beginning to be felt within China and outside her borders. Climate change, species loss, pollution, water scarcity and environment damage are not problems confined to one country: they are challenges that concern all the world's citizens, but the rise of China gives them a new urgency. Tackling these challenges will require a common effort and common understanding. At Chinadialogue they aim to promote that common understanding. By establishing the world's first fully bilingual website devoted to the environment they aim to promote direct dialogue and the search for solutions to our shared environmental challenges.

At this event, Isabel Hilton, Becky Hogge, and Caspar Henderson present three perspectives on their work developing China Dialogue.

 

Abstracts

Isabel Hilton has been covering Chinese affairs throughout her 30 year career as a political journalist. Over that time, the issues surrounding China in the global community have changed. In the 21st century, the world looks on as a rising super-economy further tips the balance against the climate we rely upon for our survival as a species. As China emerges from isolationist policies of the 20th century, the need for conversation between China and the world has never been stronger.

It is within this frame of reference that Isabel Hilton conceived of China Dialogue, the world’s first completely bilingual conversation between English and Chinese speakers conducted across the Web. As editor of openDemocracy, Hilton was uniquely placed to see the potential of the Web to foster dialogue between those with opposing viewpoints. But there were significant challenges to taking the same approach to China, not least the country’s renowned policy of censorship of online material.

In this presentation, Isabel Hilton discusses how China Dialogue met these challenges, and how in meeting them, she has reconfirmed her belief that dialogue with China is the most important way forward for the region and the world.

Becky Hogge has spent the last six months heading the team which constructed chinadialogue.net. In this presentation she discusses the challenges of building a website which engages two different language communities, in an environment where censorship and state scrutiny are issues. By detailing the process behind building chinadialogue.net, Hogge will highlight successful approaches to commissioning websites that aim to foster dialogue.

Caspar Henderson will discuss global and regional environmental issues as they relate to China. He will pay particular attention to climate change, and China's challenges in that context.

 

About the speakers:

Isabel Hilton is the editor of Chinadialogue. She is also the editor of openDemocracy.net. She is a journalist, broadcaster, writer and commentator and has worked for and contributed to a wide range of international media, including the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Independent, The Sunday Times, the Economist, the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta and the BBC. She has reported extesnively from Latin America, South Asia, China, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Isabel Hilton wrote The Search For The Panchen Lama (2000) and has co-authored other books, including The Falklands War (1982). She has reported several documentaries for the BBC, such as Petra and The General, an investigation of the life and death of Petra Kelly (1994).

An expert on Chinese affairs, Isabel Hilton holds a degree in Chinese from the University of Edinburgh and also studied at the Peking Language Institute and Fudan University in Shanghai. After working for The Sunday Times covering home and foreign affairs she joined The Independent in 1986 as Latin America editor. She was appointed European affairs editor and chief feature writer before leaving the newspaper in 1995. Isabel Hilton presented BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight from 1995 until 1998, then joined Radio 3's Night Waves, which she still presents.

Isabel Hilton lectures extensively on foreign affairs on a wide variety of platforms. She is a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the British Association of China Scholars and has served on the advisory committee of the Latin America Bureau.

Isabel Hilton's recent articles include:

Happy (5th) Birthday to us! openDemocracy greetings;

Beijing's media chill;

Imagining power: Carlos Fuentes interviewed;

The right to life: an interview with Sister Helen Prejean;

 

Becky Hogge is the Technology Director of China Dialogue. She is also openDemocracy’s Technology Director and Technology Commissioning Editor. Her writing on music, technology and intellectual property law has been published in several national and international publications, including the UK Guardian, Index On Censorship and Dazed and Confused.

Becky Hogge's recent articles include:

What moves a movement?;

The web's hall of mirrors;

Open source ubuntu;

The battle for net neutrality;

Microsoft: closed windows and hidden vistas.

 

Caspar Henderson is a contributing editor for Chinadialogue. Early in working life he was a script reader in Hollywood, before moving via development work in Uganda to human rights and environmental journalism in London. He was the first coordinator at the Green College Centre for Environmental Policy at Oxford University, and contributed for some years to BBC radio, The Financial Times, New Scientist and other publications, winning an IUCN-Reuters award for best environmental writing in Central and Western Europe. He was a senior editor at openDemocracy.net until last year. This year he is working on a book about the future of coral reefs, and has also written and edited on UK Energy policy and other issues for New Statesman, the Institute of Physics, Director Magazine, New Scientist and other publications. He is an advisor to Artists' Project Earth. Caspar proposed that Chindialogue choose the environment as a theme.

Recent articles

Ocean acidification: the other CO2 problem (here)

Coral Bones (here)

Grains of Sand (here)

Potential Energy: a blog from the Institute of Physics (here)

Heat and Light: UK Energy Policy in Context (Editor - here)

 

About China Dialogue :

chinadialogue.net is an independent, non-profit organisation based in London and Beijing. It is owned by the openTrust, a London based educational charity. It is an initiative supported under the UK-China Sustainable Development Dialogue (here). If you would like to support them and help chinadialogue to continue, please contact theo.chan@chinadialogue.net .

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Overview: here - Abstracts: here - About the Speakers: Isabel Hilton - Becky Hogge - Caspar Henderson - About Chinadialogue.net