2017 Luojia Young Scholars Interdisciplinary Forum was Held

On April 28, the 2017 Luojia Young Scholars Interdisciplinary Forum was held in Wuhan University. This forum, with the theme of " ‘Belt and Road' Geography: Theory and Policy", is jointly organized by seven humanities and social sciences academic innovation teams, More than 60 scholars, including invited experts from various disciplines and young scholars from 26 young academic innovation teams, have attended the forum.

8 young scholars from different disciplines made keynote speeches. The forum also arranged free discussion session, and invited five experts to make comments and summary.

Zhang Xiaotong, team leader of "'Belt and Road' and economic diplomacy”, took the lead in making the keynote speech. After briefing on the development trend and prospect of the current natural geography and human geography, he suggested that the concept of "big geography" with Chinese characteristics should be built in the process of promoting the "Belt and Road" initiatives. Yang Liyin made a speech entitled "philosophical resources of the 'Belt and Road' strategy". On the basis of reviewing relevant thoughts of Hegel, Kant, Marx and other thinkers, she explored the philosophical implications of world history and world structure from the two dimensions of time and space. Li Zhigang systematically introduced the 21st century critical city theory. He took Guangzhou International Immigration Area as an example to show the dislocation of western city theory and reality in China, and introduced the achievements of urban social space research in China at current stage.

Professor Chen Shuguang from the School of Marxism made some comments on the speeches of the previous three teachers. He thought that “Belt and Road” is not only about natural geography, but more about human geography; it not only rewrite the world economic map, but also profoundly affect the geopolitical structure and international political pattern; it is not only about the transcendence of the globalization of capitalism, but also about the future development of globalization.

Hu Hong from the School of History introduced the route of the ancient Silk Road, the exchange of goods and culture. Wang Chao introduced the cultural geography research under the background of modern science and new trend of cultural geographic research under new geographical conditions, and demonstrated the visualized platform system of ancient literature. He Xiangwu from School of Political Science and Public Administration also expressed his own views from the perspective of diplomatic studies, saying that "Belt and Road" should focus on solving the cultural identity between China and the countries along the route.

Xia Fan from Wuhan University China Institute of Boundary and Ocean Studies reviewed the rise of the Western European countries along the Silk Road on the sea from the perspective of map cartography, and elaborated the relationship between map, mapping technology and the world view, it is proposed that we should carefully choose what kind of map to use in the planning of “Belt and Road”. Luo Guoqiang explored from the perspective of security that with the introduction of “Belt and Road” strategy, what kinds of peace and security issues China is going to deal with, what kind of legal practice we have in China, and what kind of response measures we need to introduce. Wang Lei from the Institute of Development of Central China made some comments on the above speeches. He suggested that the key words of this interdisciplinary exchange were space and integration; "Belt and Road" initiative requires joint research of various disciplines, instead of limiting to a certain area.

In the free discussion session, Xia Fan answered the question -- "what kind of map should we choose to carry out the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative?", he pointed out that in the choice of the projection center, we should select a country along the “Belt and Road”; in the choice of projection mode, both three-dimensional and two-dimensional will have some errors, so we should consider a combination of several projection options.

It is reported that since 2010 when Wuhan University officially launched the humanities and social science young scholar academic team building, it has selected four batches of 66 young scholar teams including nearly 700 young teachers, basically covering all liberal arts departments.