2022 Asian Association for Public Administration (AAPA) Annual Conference Successfully Held

On December 3-4, 2022, Asian Association for Public Administration (AAPA) Annual Conference was successfully held. Hundreds of delegates from more than 20 countries and regions, including China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, the United States, Italy, Australia, etc., met to discuss the theme of "New Governance Challenges towards Sustainable Development Goals in Asia and the World". The conference was co-organized by the Asian Association for Public Administration, International Institute of Administrative Sciences, the International Public Policy Association, China Institute for Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, with the support of Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

On the evening of December 2, the Asian Association for Public Administration held a board meeting, which amended the AAPA Charter and elected 7th Board Directors of AAPA. Professor Jiannan Wu, Dean of School of International and Public Affairs, Executive Vice Director of China Institute for Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was re-elected as the President. Professor Heungsuk Choi, Korea University and Professor Alexander Kochegura, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration were re-elected as Vice-President. Professor Agus Pramusinto, who is the President of National Institute of Public Administration Indonesia, President of Indonesian Civil Service Commission and Professor at Universitas Gadjah Mada was added as is the Vice-President.

The 2022 AAPA Annual Conference officially began on the morning of December 3. At the Opening Ceremony, Cheng Zhou, Vice Party Secretary of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, extended a warm welcome to the participants through an online speech. He introduced the history of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, highly affirmed the work of the China Institute for Urban Governance and School of International and Public Affairs, and placed deep expectations on this conference to deepen communication and provide wisdom.

Professor Jiannan Wu welcomed and thanked the experts and scholars from 26 countries at this conference. He hoped that the learning, sharing, and communication during this Annual Conference would unite scholars and practitioners from Asia and the world to examine and discuss the main challenges and issues in achieving the SDGs, so as to promote the realization of the SDGs.

Sofiane Sahraoui, Director General of International Institute of Administrative Sciences, emphasized the importance of the SDGs, introduced the efforts made by all parties in achieving the goals, pointed out the importance of developing resilience in the context of Covid-19, and highly praised China's achievements in public services.

Jiang Wu, Founding President of Asian Group of Public Administration (AGPA), reviewed the history of Asian Association for Public Administration and Asian Group of Public Administration and his indissoluble relationship with Asian public Administration. He highly recognized and expressed his expectations for this conference to study the path to achieve the SDGs from the perspective of governance.

Juwang Zhu, Director of Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, pointed out the challenges and opportunities of the SDGs and put forward thoughts and expectations for the realization of the sustainability goals, from the perspective of friendly cooperation between the Asian Association for Public Administration and the United Nations.

The Opening Ceremony was presided over by Heungsuk Choi, Vice-President of the Asian Association for Public Administration and Professor of Korea University.

In the Keynote Speech Session, Professor Eko Prasojo, President of Asian Group of Public Administration, Professor of Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Indonesia, gave a speech on the theme of “Creating Agile Governance to Support the Achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals”. He analyzed the dilemma and characteristics of national capacity, regulations, and citizenship in the post-pandemic era through the case study of Indonesia's governance, and pointed out that, in order to achieve the SDGs in the post-pandemic era, it is necessary to strengthen integration and cooperation, further advance the responsiveness and flexibility of governments, accelerate the improvement of digital governance capabilities, and create more opportunities for equal and innovative development.

Professor Alex Brillantes Jr., Secretary General of the Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration, Professor and former Dean of the National College of Public Administration and Governance, the University of the Philippines Diliman, gave a speech on the theme of " The Contemporary Trends and Issues in the Praxis of Public Administration in the Post Covid Era", detailing the background and development history of the SDGs, and deeply analyzing the new challenges and issues of the SDGs in the context of the Covid epidemic. He pointed out that public management today needs 5E1A, namely effectiveness, efficiency, economy, ethics, equity, and accountability.

Professor Danny Quah, Dean of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, focused on the conflicts and contradictions between certain SDGs. He advocated that achieving "good governance" requires wise but difficult choices between different "good" goals.

Professor Richard Walker, Chan Hon Pun Professor of Behavioural and Policy Sciences, Dean of College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, delivered a speech entitled " Revisiting the Academic-Practitioner Divide with Computational Social Science Evidence". His research confirms the academic and practical divergence of public administration topics and their changes over time by analyzing the differences in topics in related corpus in different period. He noted that the priority of SDG implementation required a more careful assessment in both academic and real-world fields.

Professor Kaifeng Yang, Dean of School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Renming University of China, Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, delivered a keynote speech on "Toward Resilient Governance: Lessons from COVID-19". Starting from seven dimensions, including institutional resilience, structural resilience, organizational resilience, resource resilience, agency resilience, cultural resilience and technical resilience, he elaborated on the connotation of "resilient governance", emphasizing that since government governance is shifting from clear, linear and single to ambiguous, non-linear and pluralistic, the practice of "resilient governance" faces contradictions, breakthroughs and instability, and management is sometimes closer to an art than a science.

Professor Zhirong Zhao, Dean of School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, delivered a speech on the theme of “Toward Urban Fiscal Resilience: Urban Risk Accounting and Fiscal Resilience Mechanisms”. His research gave an in-depth analysis of urban resilience from the perspective of finance and divided the disturbance into two categories of natural interference and human interference based on the urban risk accounting table of interference, which vividly illustrated the urban risks caused by these interference factors. In addition, he sorted out the framework and preparation mechanism of urban fiscal resilience from the two levels of response mechanism and preparation mechanism.

Professor Xufeng Zhu, Professor and Executive Dean at the School of Public Policy and Management, Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainable Development Goals, Tsinghua University, delivered a speech on "Central-Local Relations, Regional Policy Experimentation, and Sustainable Development in China". Starting from the question of "how can China encourage local governments to actively implement sustainable development without fundamentally changing the motivation to maintain rapid economic growth", he summarized the implementation model of sustainable development in the world, introduced the work undertaken by the central government and local governments in China's competitive regional pilot program and the typical cases of China's sustainable development competitive regional pilot program, and systematically explained the implementation of pilot zone of China's national sustainable development.

Professor Kai Tian, Vice Dean of School of Government, Beijing University, shared his research on the implementation of organizational governance rules. Based on the method of interviewing and archival data analysis, his research found that organizations play an important role in sustainable development; it is very important to equip organization members with sufficient information and necessary to stimulate members for rule enforcement.

Professor Naomi Aoki, University of Tokyo, gave a lecture on "AI for Sustainable Development: Opportunities and Challenges for the Public Sector", illustrating the problems and challenges AI poses to the public sector by presenting examples of applying AI in specific areas of the SDGs, such as health and education. She noted that AI must be reliable and trustworthy for the public sector, and that more interdisciplinary collaboration and empirical research are required in the future.

The keynote speech was moderated by Professor Alexander Kochegura, Vice-President of the Asian Association for Public Administration, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.

A total of 24 parallel panels were set up at this Annual Conference, covering community governance, epidemic governance, scientific and technological innovation, public health, climate and environmental protection, regional cooperation, housing security, social equity, government-private interaction, emergency governance, public finance, urban planning, artificial intelligence and digital governance, energy supply, public opinion governance, etc. Experts and scholars from 26 countries and regions around the world conducted in-depth discussions and exchanges in the Panel Session. The Annual Conference also featured a Special Workshop on "Localizing the SDG Agenda". Focusing on the localization of developable goals, experts from seven countries and regions, including Italy, Brazil, Norway, Japan, Sweden, China, and Africa, gathered to disassemble the key difficulties of policy analysis and performance governance layer by layer from the three dimensions of theoretical methods, practical dilemma, and governance methods, to seek breakthroughs in both theory and practice.

On the evening of December 3, Yijia Jing, Dean of Institute for Global Public Policy and Governance, Fudan University, presided over the AAPA Editors’ Forum. Five journal editors including Yang Liu of the Journal of Urban Affairs, Dongzhe Shen of the International Review of Public Administration, Hongtao Yi of Urban Governance, Zhilin Liu of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis and Jingwei He of Policy & Society and Journal of Asian Public Policy introduced relevant journals and had full exchanges with the participants.

The Closing Ceremony was presided over by Xiaoyi Zhang, Party Secretary of School of International and Public Affairs, Party Branch Secretary of China Institute for Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The award ceremony of "Akira Nakamura Best Paper Award" was held in this session. Professor Xufeng Zhu, Chairman of the AAPA 2022 Academic Committee, introduced this year's awarding process, and Professor Akira Nakamura, the first President of AAPA, Meiji University, presented the Akira Nakamura Best Paper Award. Three papers received this award:

Tongyun Du: What can make residents satisfied about their neighborhoods after urban renewal: A comparison of three urban renewal projects in Chongqing, China

Anil Kumar Gupta and Tulasi Sharan Sigdel: Integrating Sustainable Development Goals in Local Plans: Unravelling the Practices and Encounters of Local Governments in Nepal

Charmaine B. Distor, Odkhuu Khaltar, and M. Jae Moon: The Impact of Local Government Capacity, Infrastructure, and Resilience on Local Business Activity in Philippine Cities

Finally, Professor Jiannan Wu, President of AAPA, delivered a closing speech. He summarized the overall situation of this conference, expressed sincere gratitude to all organizers and all participants on behalf of AAPA, announced the three Vice-Presidents of AAPA, and said that in the future, AAPA will further serve academic research and practice of public administration, and strive to build a global community of public administration based on Asia.