The Final Countdown
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” -Winston Churchill
Today is the first day of August; a reminder that school begins this month, and my weeks of summer research are quickly wrapping up. I go home to Indianapolis in 10 days, where I will finish researching the Indianapolis-Hangzhou, Indiana-Hangzhou portion of my project by sifting through information put together by the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research, a local think tank. Jay Hein, the think tank president, has offered to give me access to interviews with professionals who were on the state-government sponsored trip to China earlier this year. They also have graciously allowed me to come in and be part of their project partnering Sagamore with ZASS (a think tank in Zhejiang Province). That partnership, which began in 2006, is an encouraging sign that some institutions are taking advantage of the sister city relationship in order to exchange information.
I received a heartening email from my friend Matt who is working for the Indiana governor this summer. The governor, Mitch Daniels (R), is planning a mission to China and Japan this fall and will be stopping in Zhejiang Province. A proactive gesture, possible beginning to rewarding relationships and a use of funds for something international even in this tight economic climate is heartening. Matt asked me to send him any information for a trip guidebook that might be relevant for the governor to know about Zhejiang Province, prior to Daniels’ visit, which made me feel happy that my summer research project could have a real impact on the field which I’m looking to enter into.
Sagamore’s think tank partnership, Daniels’ trip, Leslie Swartz’s (Boston Children’s Museum VP) enthusiasm about Chinese exhibits, active sister city relationships between cities like San Francisco, Seattle and their partners and the willingness of the Charles Center to allow me to look into this topic for the summer has encouraged me that the first step of effective partnerships— a genuine interest and desire to communicate— is possible and happening. I was encouraged to see an informational billboard in the Indianapolis airport describing each of Indianapolis’s sister cities when I left for Boston in June. The interested and positive reaction of students and professionals in Boston, as I have described my research, is heartening. Many college-age students that I’ve run into have expressed a genuine interest in the subject matter I’m learning about and seem to agree with the importance of the issue.
U.S.-China partnerships have come a long way since the 1979 recognition of the PRC and still has a long way to go. Positive perception, attitude and a willingness to cooperate is of the utmost importance, and I believe that sister city and state partnerships can be a valuable tool in getting that to happen.
So what is left for me to do?
Expand and fine tune my research paper. Develop an accompanying presentation that can accurately summarize my main points and findings at the Summer Research Celebration in September. Keep working on my ideas for connecting the U.S. and China, especially on a smaller/regional scale, into the future. The Charles Center grant has given me the opportunity to, I hope, make a good contribution to the field and raise awareness of the importance of economic and cultural ties. The grant has also allowed me to discover my own interest in the topic which is deeper than I had previously imagined when starting out in this process. I want to use this opportunity from the Charles Center as a foundation for future work contributing to Economics and International Relations. So, even though the summer is almost over, I my involvement in this realm is just beginning.
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