Dialogue with Jared Diamond: Global Pandemic and Crisis Management

Background
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the world, and will likely coexist with mankind for a long time. The pandemic has induced a global economic slowdown and dramatic rise in unemployment, and has triggered deep economic recession and social unrest in various countries. Jared Diamond, member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and author of global best-sellers Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis, will meet with Chinese readers to discuss the global risks and opportunities brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, and explore potential pathways out of this predicament.

Time
Live Streaming: Thursday July 2, 20:00-21:00 Beijing Time

Format
Live streaming on Douyin, caixinglobal.com, Twitter, YouTube

Topic
- How should we evaluate response mechanisms to the COVID-19 pandemic implemented by different countries?
- How should we understand similarities and differences between the institutions, cultures, and values behind the various countermeasures?
- What selective changes could we make to the global governance system to manage current and future crises?

Language：English with bilingual subtitles

Speakers
Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography, UCLA; author of Upheaval
Song Bing, Vice President, Berggruen Institute; Director, Berggruen China Center

Moderator
Li Xin, Vice President, Caixin Media; Managing Director, Caixin Global

Biographies

Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond is a Pulitzer-prize-winning author of five best-selling books, translated into 38 languages, about human societies and human evolution: Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, Why Is Sex Fun?, The Third Chimpanzee, and The World until Yesterday. As a professor of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles, he is known for his breadth of interests, which involves conducting research and teaching in three other fields: the biology of New Guinea birds, digestive physiology, and conservation biology. His prizes and honors include the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Science, and election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is a director of World Wildlife Fund/U.S. and of Conservation International. As a biological explorer, his most widely publicized finding was his rediscovery, at the top of New Guinea’s remote Foja Mountains, of the long-lost Golden-fronted Bowerbird, previously known only from four specimens found in a Paris feather shop in 1895.

Song Bing
Song Bing is a Vice President of the Berggruen Institute and the Director of the Institute’s China Centre. She also sits on the editorial board of an online journal Noema. She writes opinions, op-eds and short essays for journals such as Washington Post, Caixin Global and Noema. Recently, she edited a book entitled Wisdom and Intelligence – Artificial Intelligence Meets Chinese Philosophers (published by Citic Press Group in February 2020). This was the first systematic endeavour by Chinese philosophers of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism to address challenges and opportunities posed by frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics.

Li Xin
Li Xin is the Vice President of Caixin Media and Managing Director of Caixin Global, leading the company’s global news and intelligence services, as well as Caixin’s international branding and events. Before Caixin, she was the Managing Editor of the Chinese Wall Street Journal and Chinese Dow Jones newswire. This is her second stint at Caixin, where she was formerly the Managing Editor of Caixin English magazine. In 2006, she founded Caijing Magazine’s first bureau in the United States, as a correspondent of politics and economics. Li Xin is an Aspen China Fellow and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, as well as a member of International Media Council at the World Economic Forum. 

Co-host

Berggruen Institute
Ideas for a Changing World
We live in a time of great transformations. Headquartered in Los Angeles, the Berggruen Institute was established in 2010 to develop foundational ideas about how to reshape political and social institutions in the face of these great transformations. We work across cultures, disciplines and political boundaries, engaging great thinkers to develop and promote long-term answers to the biggest challenges of the 21st Century.
Berggruen Institute (EN) / Berggruen China Center (CN)

Caixin Global
Caixin Global (www.caixinglobal.com) is a leading provider of independent and professional news and information from China. Our high-level event platform - Caixin Roundtable Live invites top experts to share insights from their respective fields. Our audiences include business leaders, government officials, financial professionals, industry experts, academic leaders from around the world.

Previous events