The second Antarctic Forum think-tank meeting is held in Beijing on February 5^th 2013

The meeting is hosted by Secretariat of Antarctic Forum, Counselor of the China State Council Tang Min, Director of Institute of World Economics and Politics of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Zhang Yuyan, Deputy Director of Center for International and Strategic Studies, Peking University Zhu Feng and Senior Executive of BFA Yao Wang attended the meeting.

This meeting was mainly discussed the details of the coming Antarctic Forum Preparatory meeting. Work load distribution and stuff arrangements were deployed to ensure its success.

Counselor Tang Min pointed it is essential to grip on the commanding heights to identify Antarctic Forum from other forums. The national orientation is quite ambiguous for lots of the countries in the world since the international situation is changing fast. Therefore how does China position itself in terms of international affairs and strategy is crucial especially as the world’s second largest economic entity. However, in order to avoid the negative effects of parochial nationalism and populism, China actually has limited space to develop in the international stage. The sustained science and technology revolution as well as the industrial revolution made huge impact on the social formation and thought form. It used to take hundreds of years but now it sharply shortened to decades. Therefore Antarctic Forum should be founded as a high level starting point platform while most of people are still wandering. Through Antarctic Forum, the Think-tank could explore the frontier issue even when it is still forming and developing. Furthermore, feed backs and professional advice could reach up to government to make even larger impact.

Zhang Yuyang expressed his opinion about the orientation of Antarctic Forum. He suggested the forum should work closely with environment and ocean related areas. The formation of the think-tank results could be reports similar to the G20 reports including lectures, indexes, analysis and books which could support the G20 summit meeting. To learn from and work with the well-build international think tank might also be an effective way.

Zhu Feng suggested Antarctic Forum could expand the meaning of “polar” to a new central point of the world. Polar could also be explained as a hinge of world which led by emerging economies. Not only explore Antarctica geographically but also from the angle of world’s situation and China’s international strategy.