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Criminal justice
examines China
Michelle Siazon
On-line Forty-Niner
The Cal State Long
Beach criminal justice department has made agreements with
two universities in the People's Republic of China that include
faculty exchanges with Liaoning University and the China Criminal
Police College.
The exchange was originally the idea of full-time faculty
member professor John Wang, who was an instructor at one of
the schools, a student at the other, and began developing
an agreement for a potential exchange with colleagues still
in China, according to department chair, professor Bruce Berg.
The department is currently hosting Associate Dean Song Yang
from Liaoning University, who arrived in January 2002. She
is an expert on international law and is spending the spring
semester as a visiting scholar. In the fall she will teach
a class on the difference between U.S. and Chinese criminal
justice systems.
"We went there for the first time in May of last year
and established a relationship with Liaoning University,"
said Berg. "We went back again in September and established
a written agreement with Liaoning and the National Police
College of China and we're going back now to do some lectures
with both, primarily with Liaoning and one day at the police
college," he said.
The nine-day trip over spring break included professor Berg
and Wang, who have been on both earlier trips, professor Judy
Kaci from the department and two CSULB students Alex Berg
and Miriam Kaci, who will lead talks with Chinese students
about American campus life.
Professor Berg said the trip is about a weeklong because a
day is lost on the way there and another on the way back.
They usually spend two days in Beijing to get used to the
time change before they start their lecturing. They planned
two formal lectures at Liaoning and one at the police college.
A little touring, the formal lectures with students and a
couple of informal talks with about 20 or 30 faculty who will
have the opportunity to speak and ask questions with the CSULB
representatives, are all on the agenda.
"The biggest challenge will be trying to explain how
our federal system's government works because they have a
more centralized system than we do," said Professor Kaci.
"It will be very interesting to learn from them more
about how their system works, China operates on like maybe
1 percent of their lawyers than we do. They don't rely on
the civil part of the legal system as much as we do."
Gaining cultural knowledge and personal growth are things
professor Berg is looking forward to once again.
"China is a very interesting mix of the old and the new,"
said Professor Berg. "We discovered there were 57 McDonald's
in Beijing alone, an awful lot of Kentucky Fried Chickens
and Pizza Huts and in talking with people the Chinese currently
think that that's American food. So when they go out for a
fancy dinner they go to one of those places and think it's
a fancy American dinner. As you drive around, you'll see new
cars driving right next to donkey cars and bicycles."
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