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Mr. Takanori Kitamura, Ambassador of Japan to Greece, gave a lecture titled ‘EU experience of integration and East Asian overtures’ today (17 September) on The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) campus. The lecture was warmly received by over a hundred CUHK staff and students, members of the political, business, and academic sectors, and various foreign consuls.

During the lecture, Mr. Kitamura introduced the institutional characteristics of the EU based on his experience in Europe. He first analysed the traditional sovereign states that have existed for the last 350 years, and the European countries that have relinquished sovereign rights and formed a community with one another for mutual benefit. He noted that EU is to share the sovereign rights and the same value.

He then spoke of East Asia with its fast growing economies that would exceed US and EU sooner or later. He foresaw that as a result, a tectonic power shift would take place and the traditional way of managing East Asia would be challenged. He claimed that East Asia would benefit a lot from forming a regional community. He also stressed that China and Japan are to shoulder main task of initiating and leading the community building and for that purpose, the strategic partnership between China and Japan is extremely important.

Mr. Kitamura was born in 1946 and had obtained a BA from the Nagasaki University. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan in 1972 when he was doing his MA course in economics at Keio University. After joining the ministry, Mr. Kitamura spent two years learning Chinese at the Institute of Foreign Languages and Peking University in Beijing. In 1976, he obtained an MA from Harvard University.

Mr. Kitamura has served at regional desks (China and Eastern Europe), Economic Cooperation Bureau, as well as the Protocol Office at the headquarters, and was seconded to the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Institute of International Affairs.

He has also served overseas in China, Hong Kong, New York (United Nations), the Philippines and Greece. He was appointed Consul-General to Hong Kong in 2004 and assumed the current post of Ambassador to Greece in 2006.

CUHK has been organising the Consuls General / diplomats lecture series since 2005. A number of famous diplomats, including the Consuls General of the USA, UK, Japan, France, Korea, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Italy, the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to PRC, and the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC in Hong Kong have delivered lectures on the CUHK campus.