At a time when the Chinese and U.S. governments are locked in a dispute over international waters in the South China Sea, Syracuse University sponsored a training program in the U.S. for 20 Chinese government officials.

The program, sponsored by the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, trained leaders from Shenzhen to improve the rule of law in the Chinese city. The program, which took place from Oct. 20 through Thursday in Syracuse, Albany and New York, provided these 20 officials with insight into administrative law in the U.S. The program provided translators during the seminars.

Most of the training seminars took place on the SU campus. The group also visited a polling place at Bird Library on Election Day.

“I was impressed by the high public participation rate in the legislative progress in the United States,” said Baohua Yao, one of the visiting officials, in an interview conducted in Chinese. “Also, the Freedom of Information Act is a good reference for us.”

Maxwell has worked with the Shenzhen municipal government since 2007 to improve policy-making and management skills for leaders in Shenzhen, according to the Maxwell website. The goal of the program training is to help officials with the development of the Shenzen city government. The Shenzhen government has recently worked to improve the legal literacy of government officials there.

“I think the two most important concepts in American legislation are pragmatism and innovation,” said Meng Xun, an attorney from the Yantian district in Shenzhen who is participating in the program, in an interview conducted in Chinese.

The program also received support from the Syracuse City Hall and county offices, said Xueyi Chen, the China program director of executive education at Maxwell. The group was able to have a short meeting with Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, Chen said.

Professors from other colleges at SU and the University of Waterloo in Ontario were invited to the lectures. In the meantime, the group visited government agencies such as the U.S. District Court, the Northern District of New York and Cazenovia town offices.

Chen said a couple officials asked how they could apply legislative knowledge they learned in the U.S. to Shenzhen since China and the U.S. have different legislative and political systems.

She added that Maxwell Dean James Steinberg and Yilin Hou, a professor of Public Administration and International Affairs, both agreed that the Chinese government can become more open, transparent and accountable.

“In fact, what we learned were not some technical skills that we can immediately apply in the legislation process,” said Liyin Yang, one of the program’s participants, in an interview translated from Chinese. “Instead, we learned about American mindset, which will help us in the future planning.”

China and the U.S. have worked closely in the past on economic development and building business collaborations. Terry Lautz, the interim director of the East Asia Program at Maxwell, said in an email that the relationship between China and the U.S. is a “complex mixture of cooperation and competition.”

“China’s growing military power has created uncertainty,” Lautz said. “Different approaches to human rights and the rule of law is another source of friction between the two governments.”

Recently, the U.S. and Chinese governments have been in a stalemate over patrols in the South China Sea, according to a New York Times article. During these rocky circumstances, Lautz said he was surprised this training program even happened.

“… Rapid social and economic change have produced thousands of protests at the local level in China and good governance can improve social stability,” Lautz said. “The policy to educate officials abroad is an example of pragmatism winning out over ideology.”

Published on November 18, 2015 at 11:09 pm

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