Announcing our sub-themes under the general theme The Era of Transition: Seeking Development in the Face of Challenges!

Each sub-theme represents a specific research track, and has a dedicated research group exploring related subjects and producing research papers and collaborative work! Our research groups will have the opportunity to learn personally from our speakers and publish their work through the Vanguard Think Tank group.

Sustainability and Economic Development

  • Economic downturn, clean energy, ESG, sustainability, international cooperation…

  • Previous patterns of development persistently reveal their unsustainable nature considering the challenges that occurred in the past decades. The looming specter of energy depletion, widening global inequality, and the diminishing demographic dividend are sapping the momentum needed to propel the world forward. Simultaneously, the escalating environmental degradation adds an extra burden to a planet still grappling to recover from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Charting an alternative course from the existing development model entails not only the efforts to reverse the concerning momentum at the national level but also international collaboration towards a shared future.

Technology and Innovation

  • AI and governance, AI and ethics, fintech, cybersecurity…

  • In the ever-accelerating realms of innovation, technology has been utilized as a tool for social, economic, and political advancement. What are the dynamic interplays that shape innovation today? How has China emerged as a global technological influencer? What does the future look like with AI? By exploring these questions, we will examine how our communities are being challenged by strides in communication innovation and intelligence building, prompting us to question who we are as humans. Ultimately, examining issues of governance will lead our way in the intricacies of how the evolution of humanity and the progression of machine development are interrelated.

Cultural Exchange and Diplomacy

  • Citizen diplomacy, de-globalization, regional integration, soft power

  • Underpinning the social construct and identities, culture functions as a pillar that upholds the unity of a nation while concurrently acting as a conduit for interpersonal connections. In an era marked by de-globalization and integration, cultural exchange has grown increasingly important, with citizen diplomacy promoting understanding and cooperation among nations. What roles does civilian cultural exchange play in the political arena? What strategies should citizen diplomacy employ to expand its influence? These queries will thread through our deliberations, sparking profound enlightenment that guide us to seek common ground while respecting differences and build a harmonious international community.

Disclaimer: As our themes were brainstormed and voted on by our audiences, we want to acknowledge the attention and support that the Sustainability and the Environment subtheme gained. It has been excluded as a separate theme on the following accounts:

  1. We have covered this theme in the past two iterations of this conference and would like to apply the lens of development instead.

  2. Sustainability and the environment are inseparable from social, economic, and the technological themes we proposed this year. Therefore, we are not abandoning the theme, but rather holding sustainability as an assumption when analyzing other socio-economic research questions at hand. In other words, environment and sustainability will still be featured throughout the conference, though not being its own separate theme.