On the morning of March 22nd, Prof. Pascal Abb, research fellow of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies and visiting scholar of the Tsinghua University, visited the SIES and made a keynote speech on the topic of “Comparison of German and Chinese Think Tanks”. After the speech, he exchanged ideas and opinions with ZHANG Zuqian, XIN Hua, LONG Jing, DAI Yichen, JI Lei, YE Yuming, and YANG Haifeng, Prof. Pascal Abb thought that Chinese think tanks are on a path of high speed development because China’s State Council already took the objective of forging a group of “new type” “world-class” think tanks as its priority. However, he also pointed out that some problems still exist in the Chinese think tanks currently, such as the redundancy rising from similar or identical research projects, insufficient horizontal exchanges, limited policy influence, and sometimes superficial analyses. He introduced the experiences of German political party think tanks, explaining their successes based on a full play of their advantages with German political parties and politicians and a worldwide network of offices and branches. He told Shanghai scholars and experts that although German political party think tanks usually do not directly criticize the political parties that host them, they can publish personal opinions of various experts and scholars and extend analyses and criticisms on specific issues from multiple angles and diverse perspectives, which may help to upgrade the quality of policymaking.
