Interview transcript: Ambassador Wang Xiaolong with NZ Fabian Society
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Mike Smith
Hello, my name is Mike Smith, from the New Zealand Fabian Society. It's my great pleasure today to interview Ambassador Wang Xiaolong from the People's Republic of China to talk with us about China's values. I heard Ambassador Wang speak at a meeting convened by the Institute of International Relations(NZIIA) last year and in the course of that meeting, he addressed the question of China's values and said, "China's choice for values, social system and path to modernity is made by our own people, based on our own history, culture and realities. All these choices have proven to be suitable and effective to solve China's problems and meet the needs of the Chinese people".
So, Ambassador, thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. And thank you very much for coming to explain to us China's values in more detail than when you were able to address to the Institute of International Relations. But before we do that, I wonder if you could tell us a bit about yourself, where you're from in China, where you grew up, what you've done, where you've been, what your own personal interests are, so we get a bit of a feel for your own situation.
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Video Channel
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Zoom Meetup – Fixing unemployment: Social insurance and a job guarantee
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10am–noon, Saturday 20 June 2020
Is it time to completely rethink how we deal with unemployment? We face a tsunami of job losses not seen in generations. The damage could be immense, especially if the devastation of people, regions and entire communities becomes entrenched. Many still haven’t recovered from the 1980s restructuring.
Two ideas — social insurance and a job guarantee — are gaining prominence as ways that could fundamentally change how we deal with the problem. One is intended to provide income protection for those who lose employment, the other aims for something bolder: the elimination of unemployment.
In this Zoom meetup, Dr Michael Fletcher of Victoria University of Wellington and Dr Bill Cochrane of the University of Waikato join us to explain and examine our options for change in these extraordinary times.
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Zoom Meetup – Bill Mitchell: The case for full employment and the end of austerity economics
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Unemployment is a political choice, says economist Bill Mitchell, and Covid-19 presents us with the opportunity to eliminate it. In this Zoom meetup, Professor Mitchell, a long time proponent of a job guarantee, shows what went wrong when economists began preaching austerity and why a state guarantee of full employment is central to fixing it.
Dr Geoff Bertram - How to pay for Covid-19 - May 2020
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Over 350 people registered for this webinar with Dr Geoff Bertram on Saturday May 23. He started by debunking the dominant austerity narrative which says that government spending resulting in deficits must mean either borrowing or "money-printing", which respectively either is a "burden on future generations", or inevitably leads to hyperinflation. That leads to a confusing argument that it is a strong Crown balance sheet with relatively low debt that provides fiscal space to increase spending. But it is Covid, not low Crown debt, that has opened up the fiscal space.
Read more: Dr Geoff Bertram - How to pay for Covid-19 - May 2020