Lingnan University hosts South South academic symposium focusing on development dilemmas and innovative cooperation in Global South

The “South‑South Autonomy and Solidarity — Academic Symposium Commemorating the 95th Anniversary of Samir Amin” was held from 1 to 4 September on the Tuen Mun campus of Lingnan University. Hosted by the Department of Cultural Studies of Lingnan University, the event was co‑organised by the Cultures of Sustainability Programme of the Centre for Cultural Research and Development of Lingnan University, the Global University for Sustainability, the Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives, and the Green Ground Eco-Tech Centre (Beijing). The symposium commemorated the 95th anniversary of the birth of Samir Amin, the world-renowned thinker and a founding figure of dependency theory. Experts and scholars from academic institutions including Tsinghua University, Peking University, the Renmin University of China, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Southwest University, South China Normal University, and the Southern University of Science and Technology gathered at Lingnan University. Grounded in Amin’s intellectual legacy, participants discussed development dilemmas facing the Global South, and new pathways for cooperation.

In his welcome speech, Prof Xin Yao, Vice-President (Research and Innovation) and Tong Tin Sun Chair Professor of Machine Learning at Lingnan University, extended a warm welcome to the scholars and guests who had come from afar, and thanked the Department of Cultural Studies and partners who had organised the conference. Prof Yao noted that, throughout his life, Samir Amin rooted his work in the Third World and advanced research on Global South development, breaking free from Eurocentric discourse, laying crucial intellectual foundations for autonomous development and mutual collaboration among Global South nations. The contemporary world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, he said, and major issues such as the digital economy, climate change, food security, and cultural exchange are reshaping development landscapes worldwide, so revisiting Amin’s scholarship at this juncture is timely and has great practical and academic significance.

The professor said that as a Hong Kong‑based university renowned for liberal‑arts education, Lingnan upholds its long‑standing liberal‑arts tradition, and hoped that the scholars would engage in in‑depth exchanges with faculty and students. The conference brought together leading scholars such as Prof Wang Hui, Prof Dai Jinhua, Prof Wen Tiejun, and Prof Ye Hailin, as well as young scholars from Chinese Mainland universities, providing a platform for cross‑regional and interdisciplinary dialogue.

Prof Denise Tang Tse-shang, Professor and Head of the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, then delivered an address, elaborating from a cultural‑studies perspective on the importance of Amin’s thought for epistemic decolonisation and Asian analytical viewpoints. Prof Tang, Prof Lisa Leung Yuk-ming, Associate Professor of the Department of Cultural Studies, and Prof Lau Kin-chi, Adjunct Associate Professor of the Department of Cultural Studies and Coordinator of the Programme on Cultures of Sustainability of the Centre for Cultural Research and Development, then chaired keynote sessions and moderated the roundtable on closing reflections and conclusions.

Prof Wang Hui, Distinguished Professor of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Director of the Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences at Tsinghua University, delivered a keynote address titled “Survivors’ Gifts”, drawing on Samir Amin’s views on Eurocentrism. He told the story of Hellmut Stern, a German‑Jewish musician in exile in China, and connected personal memory with East‑Asian colonial history and post‑war world order. Prof Wang emphasised that understanding Eurocentrism cannot stop at the level of cultural prejudice; answers must be sought within the historical dynamics of capitalist development, imperialist rivalries, and geopolitics.

Prof Dai Jinhua, Distinguished Humanities Professor at Peking University, gave a keynote speech titled “Modernism, Capitalism and the Age of Autophagy”. Building on Samir Amin’s intellectual legacy, she argued that if capitalism does not simultaneously reflect modernism and its logic of linear progress, technological optimism, and developmentalism, it will be difficult to create genuine alternative futures. Artificial intelligence and digital technologies are reshaping labour, wealth distribution, cultural production, and factual cognition, she said, and the prospect of the complete structural disappearance of work itself is especially worthy of vigilance. Prof Dai used the term “Age of Autophagy” to describe how modern civilisation consumes its own social foundations amid technological advancement, and suggested reviving public debates and collective agency to imagine alternatives through practice.

Prof Wen Tiejun, eminent expert on sannong (three-dimensional agrarian aspects of peasants, villages, and agriculture) and former Dean of the School of Agricultural and Rural Development at the Renmin University of China, gave a special address entitled “Village‑Community Economics and Food Security”. He showed how Samir Amin’s theory of delinking finds practical expression in China, arguing that rural societies act as ballast against globalisation‑fuelled crises, and that food financialisation is a key driver of contemporary food crises, exemplified by the 2008 global food crisis.

Centering peasant‑household and village‑community rationality, Prof Wen explained that a rural society’s institutional capacity to internalise external risks forms the bedrock of Chinese civilisation. He also analysed agricultural cost dilemmas where “the floor sits above the ceiling”, brought about by land‑embedded welfare and rigid ground rents alongside issues of grain‑stock layout and supply‑chain resilience behind aggregate food security, and stressed the need to reassess rural risk‑bearing capacity through ecological transformation.

Prof Ye Hailin, President of the China‑Africa Institute and General-Director of the Institute of West‑Asian and African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, delivered a special online presentation: “China‑Africa Community of Shared Future and Africa’s Autonomous Development”, tracing the historical evolution of collective identity categories including “Third World”, “developing countries”, and “Global South”. Prof Ye maintained that China’s Global South positioning, Chinese‑African common interests, and the applicability of China’s modernisation ought not to be taken as default assumptions, but require rigorous theoretical elaboration. He observed rising resource nationalism and aspirations for economic autonomy across Africa, and suggested that Chinese‑African cooperation prioritise local research, alignment of interests, mass communication, and cross‑cultural understanding, advancing area and country studies with a Chinese perspective, host‑country standpoint, and global outlook.

Financial scholar Mr Lu Qiyuan gave a speech entitled “Decentralised Geoeconomic Structures: Emerging Modes of Delinking in the Digital Economy Era” on long‑term fiscal‑financial practice and his research into the Hong Kong SAR’s “super‑rentier” dynamics. Mr Lu examined colonial periodisation, state‑capital relations, and the Washington Consensus, pointing out that real subjectivity demands both adaptability and creativity, and attention to fiscal, financial, and direct‑tax institutional building. He argued that the Belt and Road Initiative fosters polycentric geoeconomic networks beyond US‑dollar hegemony, while data, algorithms, and digital assets are transforming relations between labour, capital, and wealth, opening new theoretical questions for delinking in the digital economy era.

During the “Revisiting the Theory of Delinking” roundtable and the “Concept and Practice of Building a Global South Knowledge Base” workshop, it was agreed that Samir Amin’s intellectual legacy retains a powerful explanatory force and vitality today, and that South‑South autonomy and solidarity practices must be deepened continually and promoted under new historical conditions.