(Correspondent: Kai Feng) At noon on March 21st, CTSNK held the second bi-week seminar of this semester in the conference room on the 12th floor of the School of Economics. This seminar is one of the activities of the Nankai Centennial Celebration series. The theme is “South-South Cooperation and the Gift of the Dragon”. The speaker is Professor Li Ronglin, the director of the South-South Cooperation Research Center of Nankai University and the doctoral advisor. More than 40 teachers and students from universities such as Nankai University, Hebei University of Technology and Tianjin University of Finance and Economics attended the seminar.

Professor Ronglin Li first introduced the basic concepts and main principles of South-South cooperation. "South-South cooperation" is cooperation between developing countries and is a supplement to "North-South cooperation". The cooperation focuses on the following fields: political, economic, social, demographic, resource, and environment. Among them, economic cooperation is an important part of South-South cooperation. Economic cooperation can be further subdivided into three aspects: trade, investment, and foreign aid. South-South cooperation is a demand-oriented cooperation. Equality and mutual benefit are the most important principles, in line with the reality of developing countries and China, and also based on the consensus of the international community. Developing countries and economies have an important position in China's foreign trade and foreign investment. China is a latecomer in South-South cooperation, but her achievements have attracted worldwide attention.

Professor Li also analyzed the relationship between China's unconditional aid and bundling aid, foreign aid and recipient country debt growth from different angles based on the American scholar Deborah Brotigam's work on China's aid to Africa. "No conditions attached" is an important principle that China adheres to in South-South cooperation and is the consensus of the South. Bundled aid has been a common practice in most countries. Although it may reduce the effectiveness of aid, it can also inhibit the impact of corruption in recipient countries on aid to a certain extent.

Finally, Professor Li pointed out that in the face of the transformation of international cooperation patterns, further research could be conducted in the following fields: the impact of South-South cooperation on developing countries, the impact of aids on trade, the impact of South-South cooperation on the “Belt and Road Initiative” and so on.

At the seminar, Professor Li and many professors from the CTSNK had a heated discussion. Prof. Guoming Xian, Professor Bin Sheng, Professor Jinping Dai, Professor Dianchun Jiang, and Professor Shunqi Ge spoke respectively on the development of the world economy and the status quo of China's foreign trade, investment and assistance, and placed high hopes on relevant research in the field of South-South cooperation. The meeting ended in a warm atmosphere.