On October 12, 2015, Mr. Kyota Omori, president of Mitsubishi Research Institute, one of the biggest think-tank in Japan, led Liu ShenQiu, chairman of Beijing Techrefine Co., Ltd, operating under the PKU tech, and Li Yigong, general manager of the same company to visit the Peking University(PKU) for the first time. Vice president of PKU, Li Yansong, associate director of the Institute of Social Science Survey, and faculties of the office of International Relations PKU have welcomed the guests at Linhuxuan. Professor Li Yansong visited Mitsubishi Research Institute twice previously in 2013 and 2015 to discuss the issue of conducting a cooperative research. Mitsubishi Research Institute is a research and consulting company based in Tokyo, Japan, and is the member of Mitsubishi Group. The institute does research in many fields, mostly focusing on domestic macroeconomics, industry analysis, social development of urban areas, energy, and science technology. The institute of Social Science Survey at PKU and the Mitsubishi Research Institute have been cooperating in conducting analytic research. Today, they mainly exchange views in the cooperative research and how to implement them.
The cooperation is not only aimed to get access to broader and deeper information and resources but also to share their knowledge and skills of certain field of study. During the meeting, they discussed the issue of aging society, which has already become a controversial problem that everyone is concerned about in Japan. “Aging society is one of the biggest problems nowadays, not only in Japan, but also in many other developed countries. We have to combat the problems in long-run because the situation could change drastically in a short term.” Mr. Omori said. China is still a developing country, but the time will come for China as well. Prof. Li Yansong pointed out, “China can learn from Japan’s wisdom and knowledge of how to deal with the problem specially because we share similar cultural background.”
They also talked about conducting a joint conference on macroeconomics with Mitsubishi Research Institute and National School of Development at PKU. To some extent, China and Japan share common interests in microeconomics. “If both institutes could draw a tangible solution, it would be very important contribution to both countries’ national interests.” Mr. Omori emphasized.
Another topic that was discussed during the meeting was the summer internship for Mitsubishi Research Institute. Last summer they had students from Tsinghua and Fudan University, and this year want to invite a few outstanding students from PKU. The internship is for 4-6 weeks with accommodation and salary. “Beside Tsinghua and Fudan, we invited excellent students from Oxford, Stanford and California State University in the past years.” Mr. Omori said. The information of the internship will be released on the website of PKU Office of International Relations in early 2016.
At the end of the meeting, two parties agreed to work on the joint conference of both institutes and keep encouraging the interaction between Mitsubishi Research Institute and PKU. Mr. Omori said that PKU has a beautiful campus and hope to come to visit again in the near future. After the meeting, Prof. Li took the guests for a walk on campus and had lunch at a restaurant of Shaoyuan.
Written by:Ami Higuchi
Edited by: Wei Wei
