Bulletin Spring‧Summer 2007

45 News in Brief Japan Consul-General Lectures on Japan-China Relations M r. Shigekazu Sato, Consul-General of Japan in Hong Kong, delivered a lecture entitled ‘Japan-China Relations and the Future of Asia’ on 22 March. Mr. Sato served as the First Secretary of the Embassy of Japan in the United States of America and in the People’s Republic of China. He was the Counsellor in the Embassy of Japan in the United States of America, the Minister of the Embassy of Japan in Indonesia. In August 2006, Mr. Sato was appointed Consul-General in Hong Kong. Nobel Laureate Douglass C. North Lectures at CUHK T he University invited Prof. Douglass C. North, 1993 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, to deliver a lecture entitled ‘The Natural State’ on 1 March. In his lecture, Prof. North provided a whole new approach to understanding the process of economic change. The natural state is a complex construct of independent political, economic, and social elites that tend to evolve automatically as humans create societal organizations throughout history. The lecture’s focus was why the natural state is natural and why it is so difficult to transform to an ‘open access’ society.