NISPAcee and the Chinese Society of Administrative Reform:

What can they learn from one another?

This was the major objective of a visit by a Chinese delegation to the NISPAcee Headquarters in Bratislava on July 3, 2015. The delegation was led by WEI Liqun, President of China’s Society of Administrative Reform. Other members of the delegation included WANG Manchuan, Secretary General, WANG Lu, Executive Deputy Secretary, HU Qingping, Division Director and HU Xianzhi, Division Director. The delegation was accompanied by PAN Weiwang, China's Ambassador to the Slovak Republic and WANG Ruixiang, Head of the Political Section and Spokesman of the Embassy of the P.R. of China in the Slovak Republic. They were welcomed by Gyorgy Jenei, former NISPAcee President, Ludmila Gajdosova, NISPAcee Executive Director, Juraj Sklenar, Info and PR Manager and Elena Zakova, Project Manager.

Representatives from both sides shared information regarding their institutions, missions, objectives, organisational structures and activities. They agreed that the scope of their activities and interests were very similar within the territories of their operation – scientific conferences and research, workshops and trainings for civil servants, publications including an academic Journal, and the facilitation of international cooperation. The discussion focused on therelevance of NISPAcee’s experience for China and vice versa. Both sides agreed it would be worthwhile launching possible joint activities, which could serve to further extend mutual cooperation and learning from one another. These could include an exchange of experts for conferences, joint comparative research, study visits, joint workshops and the exchange of publications. Both sides agreed they could begin with joint research and therefore would work on thedevelopment of the most relevant research agenda with the aim of presenting selected papers in aspecial session during next year’s NISPAcee annual conference in 2016.