CCG’s Journey in 15 Years

The Center for China and Globalization (CCG) is a non-governmental think tank based in Beijing, founded by Dr. Henry Huiyao WANG and Dr.  Mable Lu MIAO in 2008. CCG has been granted the official special consultative status by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) as a non-governmental organization. In the 2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index by the University of Pennsylvania Think Tank and Civil Society Program (TTCSP), CCG ranked 64th of the top think tanks worldwide and among the top 50 “best independent think tanks.”

CCG now has more than ten branches and overseas representatives and over 100 full-time researchers and staff engaged in research on globalization, global governance, international economy and trade, international relations and global migration. CCG is also one of the rare national Postdoctoral Programme Research Centers, certified China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, outside China’s state apparatus.

CCG has also built an international research network of leading experts in China and overseas. CCG engages in ongoing research on China and globalization from an international perspective and publishes more than 10 books every year in English and Chinese, as well as a series of research reports. It shares its research findings with the public and has published hundreds of thousands of related books and reports.

CCG has contributed to government policy-making on national and global issues. Its proposals and recommendations are regularly heard by relevant state authorities, many of which have been acted on by the China’s central leadership and have served as reference for major decisions made by relevant departments.

With public interest in mind, CCG has developed a variety of events and platforms featuring the ideas and attendances of officials, scholars, and industry leaders and disseminating them both inside and outside China. Each year, CCG hosts high-profile flagship forums which are noted for their international participation, impact and constructiveness. CCG also hosts more than 100 events annually, including seminars, roundtables, luncheons, publishing events, and meetings on policy input and exchange.

CCG maintains long-term cooperation with many international organizations and international think tanks in hosting seminars and conducting research. CCG is an active, regular participant in international research and exchange activities. CCG is also a frequently guest on the international stage, having taken part in the Athens Democracy Forum, the Paris Peace Forum, the Munich Security Conference, the World Economic Forum, the Munk Debates, China Social and Economic Symposium of Harvard University and others. Among its close contacts are the Brookings, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Council on Foreign Relations (CSIS), the Cato Institute, the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Pew Research Center, the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute，the Korber Foundation，the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Asia Society.

In line with other influential thinktanks globally, CCG is routinely involved in Track 1.5 and Track 2 diplomacy – a testament to the recognition, respect, and regard that governments and thinktanks place on CCG.

Frequently hosting foreign officials and thinktankers in Beijing, CCG is one of the most valued ports of call outside Chinese state organs. CCG routinely hosts visitors from  Beijing’s diplomatic community and is also routinely invited to events hosted by them. CCG meets them physically and virtually, both inside and outside China.

Funding

CCG relies on corporate donations and research grants for funding, and also generates revenue from publications, event sponsorship, providing research services etc., in line with international practice. The biggest donors to CCG are the Chinese private sector companies  and multinational corporations. CCG is not an organ of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government, which do not have a budget for CCG.  CCG’s funding sources are annually disclosed to its advisory council meeting.  In a mid-2022 interview, CCG explains the bridge roles and the nature of CCG.

Personnel

CCG’s founders and employees are not employees of the CPC or Chinese government organs. They are in the Chinese private sector.

CPC and Chinese state employees all have their respective 编制 (bianzhi, or the authorized headcount of personnel within the state system.) CCG personnel do not.

In another example, all CPC and Chinese state employees are categorized into a 级别 (jibie, or official ranking) system, where each and every one of them has a jibie. CCG personnel do not.

CCG personnel pay their pension and medical care insurance contributions to the scheme shared by the private sector in the city of Beijing.

CCG is led by Dr. Henry Wang Huiyao and Dr. Mable Miao Lu, its two founders.

Over the years there are some misunderstanding and misinformation about CCG,here is our latest clarification on a recent Merics report on think tanks in China.

Dr. Henry Huiyao WANG

Dr. Wang is the Founder and President of CCG. He was born in 1958 in Chengdu, capital of the vast, mountain-ringed province of Sichuan in western China.

After two years of high school, at the age of 17, he was, like many people his age from urban areas across China,  sent to live in a village as part of the “down to the countryside” movement. He lived in a thatched hut next to a pigsty in a village 30 km from Chengdu, spending almost a year and a half as a farm laborer.

China re-instituted the Gaokao college entrance examination in late 1977. He passed that year’s test and was enrolled in the English and American Literature Department of the Guangzhou Foreign Language Institute in 1978, the year of China’s Reform and Opening-up.

When he finished college in early 1980s, , jobs were still mandatorily assigned to fresh graduates by the government. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC), now known as the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM).

After three years, he left MOFTEC. He pursued advanced studies and earned an MBA and a PhD degree in international management with distinction at University of Windsor, the University of Western Ontario and University of Manchester successively. After that, he undertook further training at Harvard Business School and was appointed as a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. He was a Visiting Fellow at Brookings Institution, a Senior Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada, and a Policy Fellow of IZA Institute of Labour Economics; and taught as an adjunct professor at Peking University, Tsinghua University, China University of Political Science and Law, University of Western Ontario Richard Ivey Business School.

He was appointed by Quebec government as the Chief Trade Representative for Quebec Government Office in Hong Kong and Greater China. His senior corporate positions include Director of Asia at SNC-Lavalin and Vice President for AMEC-Agra in Canada. He also had extensive experiences in international organizations, having served as Advisory Board Member of UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), and an advisory expert for the World Bank, the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the Alliance of Global Talent Organization (AGTO).

With the opinion that a sound society should be jointly supported by the government, enterprises, and organizations, which are all deeply interconnected, Dr. Wang joined the Western Returned Scholars Association (WRSA), the largest platform established by Chinese overseas returnees. There, he proposed setting up the WRSA Chamber of Commerce and was nominated as the founding president.

For some time, Dr. Wang had the privilege to join dozens of Chinese elites with overseas experience to be on the 理事会Council of the WRSA. Not an employee, his role in the Council was similar to his roles in other Councils or Advisory Boards in Chinese and foreign organizations. He exited the Council in 2021.

Before setting up the Center for China and Globalization in 2008 with Dr. Mable Miao Lu of their own volition and resources, Dr. Wang was also a part-time professor at the Guanghua School of Management of Peking University for three years.

In June 2022, Stephen Sackur on BBC’s HARDtalk described Dr. Wang as a “a member of China’s political elite both familiar with and comfortable in the world of Western thinktanks, media debate, and policy discussion…He is seen as an advocate of an open and outward-facing China embracing multilateral and global cooperation.”

The Economist in October 2022 described Dr. Wang as “something of a go-between for technocratic government ministries, Chinese entrepreneurs and foreign embassies in Beijing.”

For more details, please refer to Dr. Wang’s own writing.

Dr. Mable Lu MIAO

Dr. Mabel Lu MIAO is the Co-founder and Secretary-General.

Dr. MIAO also serves as Founder and Secretary General of Global Young Leaders Dialogue (GYLD) program, Deputy Director General of the Alliance of Global Talent Organizations (AGTO), Secretary General of China Global Talent Society and Deputy Director-General of the International Writing Center of Beijing Normal University.

Dr. MIAO is a well known global young leader. In 2016, she was met by the King of Belgium at his palace as one of seven representatives of young global leaders from Northeast Asia, has been invited to speak at Doha Forum in 2018 and 2019 and at Paris Peace Forum for five consecutive years. In 2020, she was selected as Young Leader for Munich Security Conference (MSC) from China. In 2021, as the only Chinese participant, she posted the first question to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres at the Munich Security Conference Special Edition 2021; at the same year she was also appointed as Co-Chairman of Think20 (G20 Summit 2021 Think Tank) Task Force 8. Youth representatives of GYLD (Global Young Leaders Dialogue) program received a reply from President Xi Jinping in August.

With China and Globalization, globalization of enterprises, global migration, talents mobility, overseas Chinese, think tank etc. as her major field of study, she has participated in a number of research projects entrusted by national ministries and local government departments and published monographs, edited volumes, and journal articles in both Chinese and English including: The Globalization of Chinese Enterprises Trends and Characteristics (2020), Handbook on China and Globalization (2019), China’s Domestic and International Migration Development (Springer 2019), International Migration of China: Status, Policy and Social Responses to the Globalization of Migration (Springer 2018), State Immigration Administration: Building a Competitive Immigration System for China (2018), China Goes Global: The Impact of Chinese Overseas Investment on Transforming Business Enterprises (2016) and Blue Book of Talent series: Annual Report of the Development of Chinese Returnees, Annual Report on Chinese International Migration etc.

Dr. MIAO holds a Ph.D degree in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Studies from Beijing Normal University. She was also a visiting fellow at New York University and Harvard University, a post-doctoral fellow of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUS), and a Lien Fellow at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

Testimonials

CCG represents a new type of think tank in China and its existence opens up for many cooperation of think tanks in the United States and other countries around the world. I think it is a great step forward for international cooperation and should enable us to really understand the increased cooperation among Chinese people and Americans.

——Terry Miller, Director of Center for Internaitonal Trade and Economics, Heritage Foundation; Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation

http://www.ccg.org.cn/archives/56868

CCG is perhaps the most influential think tank in China. CCG is very well-known in Washington,

D.C. At all of our most important think tanks, they make presentations, give new ideas and they help to improve China-US relations. Because there are so many misperceptions, so “CCG 减少误会，增加信任，这就是为什么 CCG 这么重要 ”, and that’s why I admire CCG so much.

——Michael Pillsbury, Senior Fellow and the Director for Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute

http://www.ccg.org.cn/archives/56868

Today it’s a huge privilege to join CCG’s dialogue to speak at such a prestigious series and especially with my good friend Leslie. It’s a great honor to be part of this discussion.

——Jim O ‘Neill, former Chairman of Chatham House and Commercial Secretary to HM Treasury of the UK

http://en.ccg.org.cn/archives/74309

Congratulations to you and the Center for China and Globalization. My goodness, what a wonderful job you’ve done in building this institution.

Let me say again how much I admire what Center for China and Globalizations has done. I’m very impressed by the scholars CCG has, the professionalism of CCG’s programs.

——John Hamre, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and former US Deputy Secretary of Defense

http://en.ccg.org.cn/archives/74371

Congratulations to CCG for continuing to lead substantive dialogue in China and globally.

——Adam S. Posen, former President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)

http://en.ccg.org.cn/archives/76980

It’s a real privilege to be here with you, I have followed the work of CCG for a long time. CCG does produce greater understanding between China and the rest of the world.

My first remark is to thank you for a very constructive, generous and sharp, yet warm dialogue that we’ve been able to have. I am very much enjoyed it and learned from it, and will very much want to keep engaged with the CCG as we go forward.

——Lawrence H. Summers, former US Treasury Secretary and President Emeritus of Harvard University

http://en.ccg.org.cn/archives/74848

CCG can be an intermediary and help to collect more ideas that are ignored by English-only speakers.

——Graham Allison, Professor of Harvard University

 http://en.ccg.org.cn/archives/75127

I want to specifically call out Henry and commend him as the President of CCG, for his leadership, passion and great intellectual accum in striving CCG to become perhaps best-in-class think tank.

——H.E.Siddharth Chatterjee, UN Resident Coordinator in China

https://youtu.be/ma0uzVp9SYA

Now, CCG is acting globally as individuals, faster, more easily and more efficiently than ever.

——Thomas L. Friedman, author and columnits with The New York Times

http://en.ccg.org.cn/archives/70938

It’s my honor to have this dialogue on a crucial subject with CCG at a crucial time.

——Martin Wolf, chief economic commentator and associate editor at Financial Times

http://en.ccg.org.cn/archives/71256

It’s a pleasure to see you again and to participate in the CCG Global Dialogue program. I’ve had great admiration for your organization since its inception. It’s a pleasure to join those who have comment.

——Stephen Roach, Senior Fellow at Yale University and former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia

http://en.ccg.org.cn/archives/74377

Now I have attended a number of events organized by CCG in different places around China. I think these events have been very valuable. By bringing together people from think tanks and research institutes not only around China, but also from other places in the world, CCG provides a platform for the exchange of views. I would really like to congratulate Professor Wang and all the colleagues at CCG for the work they have done in the past in raising the profile of think tanks in China and importance of engaging with all think tanks around the world.

——Tim Summers, Senior Consulting Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Program, Chatham House

http://www.ccg.org.cn/archives/56868

CCG is at the forefront of studies on trends and debates about globalization, not only in China, but in the entire world.

——Amitav Acharya, Distinguished Professor of International Relations, American University, Washington DC

http://en.ccg.org.cn/archives/77015

In this time when fundamental decisions are being made about the future of the world, Dr. Wang and Dr. Miao are giving us a much-needed reminder of the benefits globalization has brought to countries around the world.

——David Blair, Former Chairman of the Economics Department and Professor of Economics and Finance Eisenhower School of National Defense University in Washington

http://en.ccg.org.cn/archives/77015

“The work of Dr. Wang Huiyao and Dr. Lu Miao and CCG continues to provide an important source of dialogue and understanding between Chinese and the outside world.

The platform that the CCG provides and the spirit in which it does this have huge value and will continue to do so onto the future.”

——Kerry Brown, Professor of Chinese Studies and Director, Lau China Institute, King’s College London

http://en.ccg.org.cn/archives/77015