Professor Titumir from University of Dhaka Gives a Lecture on “Fostering Friendship for a New Era Between Two Peoples of Two People’s Republics” at SIIS

On the morning of December 16, 2024, with the support of the Centre for China Studies (CCS), the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS) hosted a lecture delivered by Professor Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, a visiting scholar from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Professor Titumir, former Chairman of the Department of Development Studies of the University of Dhaka and Director of the Board of the Central Bank of Bangladesh, has worked in diverse constituencies, namely, academia, governments, think tanks, international organizations and media. He holds Ph.D. in Economics from the University of London.
    
The lecture was chaired by Ye Yu, Associate Research Fellow of the Center for South Asian Studies of SIIS. Professor Titumir delivered a lecture titled “Fostering Friendship for a New Era Between Two Peoples of Two People’s Republics”, in which he explored five areas for potential cooperation between China and Bangladesh in the future. Following the lecture, scholars in the audience engaged in in-depth discussions with Professor Titumir on topics such as the drivers of good governance, the white paper on the state of Bangladesh’s economy drafted by the country’s interim government, capital concentration, etc.
    
Finally, Chen Dongxiao, President of SIIS and Chairman of the Academic Board of the CCS, gave a closing speech, expressing hopes that the CCS would play a more prominent role in sharing knowledge and ideas and that Professor Titumir would have the opportunity to visit China again in the future. Professor Titumir extended his gratitude to the CCS for providing him with the opportunity to visit China and for the well-organized activities. He also donated a copy of the newly published book Fifty Years of Nation Building: Political Economy of Bangladesh’s Development, for which he served as editor-in-chief, to the SIIS’s library.
    
The scholars attending the lecture also included Wang Zhongmei, Director of the Institute for World Economy Studies, SIIS; Liu Zongyi, Director of the Center for South Asian Studies, SIIS, and Director of the CCS; Cao Jiahan, Associate Research Fellow of the Institute for Public Policy and Innovation Studies, SIIS; Xue Chen, Assistant Research Fellow of the Institute for International Strategic and Security Studies, SIIS; Li Hongmei, Tan Chenyi, and Zhang Xiaoyin, Assistant Research Fellows of the Center for South Asian Studies, SIIS; and Zhu Shicheng from the Department of Think Tank Development and Scientific Research Management, SIIS.

Professor Titumir arrived in Shanghai on November 22, 2024. Over the course of nearly a month, he visited Shanghai, Beijing, and Sichuan, participating in a total of 15 academic events. He successively visited several government agencies and international organizations, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, the Embassy of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in China, and the headquarters of the New Development Bank. He also held discussions with think tanks and research institutions, such as the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, the China National Institute for SCO International Exchange and Judicial Cooperation, the China Institute of International Studies, etc. He delivered lectures at three universities, namely, Fudan University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, and Sichuan University. He participated in two international conferences, namely the 7th International Workshop on Building Regional Security Architecture in Asia-Pacific and the 9th China-India Relations Dialogue.

        
        
To facilitate think tank and people-to-people exchanges between China and Bangladesh, the CCS has made vigorous efforts to invite Bangladeshi scholars to visit China since its inauguration. Professor Titumir has been the first Bangladeshi scholar to receive such an invitation. In 2025, the CCS will also send Chinese scholars to Bangladesh for academic visits and exchanges.