On the morning of June 9, Liaoning University (LNU)’s Song Zexing Lecture Series (32nd Lecture) was held in Conference Room 401 of the Administration Building at LNU (Puhe Campus). Professor Zhang Zhongxiang, Founding Dean of the Ma Yinchu School of Economics at Tianjin University, was invited to deliver an academic lecture entitled “The China-EU Electric Vehicle Anti-Subsidy Duty and Price Undertaking Dispute and Its Implications for Enterprises Going Global”. Professor Yu Miaojie, President of LNU, attended the lecture and delivered welcoming remarks. Professor Wang Weiguang, Deputy Director of the Division of Economics of LNU; Professor Han Liangliang, Dean of the Business School; Professor Zhang Guangning, Deputy Dean; and Professor Xu Yekun, Deputy Dean, attended the lecture. The event was hosted by Professor Huo Weidong, Deputy Director of the Division of Economics of LNU.

Professor Yu Miaojie warmly welcomed and thanked Professor Zhang Zhongxiang for visiting the university and giving the lecture, and gave a comprehensive introduction to the guest speaker’s academic experience and outstanding achievements. Yu noted that Professor Zhang has extensive study and work experience both in China and abroad, holds a number of important academic positions, and enjoys a distinguished reputation in the field. He has long been engaged in frontier research areas including energy economics, environmental policy, international trade, and climate governance; has a solid academic foundation and ranks among leading scholars worldwide in terms of academic influence. Yu also noted that Professor Zhang’s research has consistently focused on major national development strategies, with many of his findings providing strong support for relevant policy decisions, while he has actively promoted international academic exchange and helped strengthen connectivity between Chinese and international academic communities. Yu said that the lecture offered a valuable learning opportunity and encouraged the faculty and students present to cherish the occasion, listen attentively, and fully absorb cutting-edge academic ideas and research findings.

Professor Zhang centered his analysis on the China-EU electric vehicle trade dispute, offering an in-depth interpretation of the motivations behind the EU’s imposition of anti-subsidy duties, the differences between relevant US and EU policies, the two-way impacts of tariffs, and the game logic behind price-undertaking negotiations. He noted that electric vehicles cover a wide range of models with complex pricing systems; together with automakers’ interconnected production and sales arrangements, this makes it highly difficult to regulate a uniform minimum price. The EU is therefore more inclined to adopt a model of case-by-case negotiations for individual vehicle models, but such a plan would face stringent approval requirements and many obstacles in implementation. Against the backdrop of the growing regionalization of global trade, he advised Chinese automakers to strengthen compliance awareness, advance full-chain localization, and explore an ecosystem-based overseas expansion path that deeply integrates technology, capital, and local industries, so as to respond steadily to the new international trade landscape.

After the lecture, on behalf of LNU, Yu Miaojie presented Professor Zhang Zhongxiang with a commemorative plaque for the Song Zexing Distinguished Lecture Series; Professor Wang Weiguang presented a commemorative photo; Professor Han Liangliang presented the LNU Think Tank Report; and Professor Zhang Guangning presented a university cap.

The lecture was hosted by the Division of Economics of LNU and organized by the Business School. Nearly 90 faculty and student representatives from units affiliated with the Faculty of Economics attended the event.

Speaker Profile: Zhang Zhongxiang is the Founding Dean of the Ma Yinchu School of Economics at Tianjin University, Chair of the expert group for assessing the implementation impact of National Science and Technology Major Projects, and a Fellow of the Asia and the Pacific Policy Society. He has received the 8th Xue Muqiao Price Research Award and the Second Prize in the 9th Outstanding Achievement Award for Scientific Research in Higher Education (Humanities and Social Sciences). One of his papers was selected by the SSCI journal Climate Policy as one of its “Top 20 Papers over the Past 20 Years.” In both economics and energy, he has continuously ranked among the world’s top 1,000 scientists by career-long scientific impact in Stanford University’s rankings. He has been listed for 12 consecutive years among Highly Cited Chinese Researchers and has remained among the top four in the Economics, Econometrics and Finance category. He has authored more than 130 English-language articles as sole author, and several of his English monographs have been included in the Foundations and Trends in Microeconomics series and the Milestones in Environmental Economics series. He serves as co-editor of Environmental Economics and Policy Studies and as an editorial board member of Q1 SSCI journals including Climate Policy, Energy Policy, Environmental Science and Policy, and International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, positions he has held for more than 20 consecutive years. He has been invited eight times to deliver plenary addresses at conferences of the International Association for Energy Economics. He has also served as an expert member for Peking University’s first international peer review, the only China-based expert appointed by the PKU president; as a consultant to UNCTAD, the OECD, the European Commission, and other institutions; as a reviewer for the Wittgenstein Award; and as a nominee for the Global Energy Prize and the Blue Planet Prize. He has been invited to and spoken at high-level workshops organized at Yale University and in Paris by Nobel laureates in economics William Nordhaus and Jean Tirole. Young scholars and doctoral students he has supervised or collaborated with have been elected to the German Academy of Science and Engineering, appointed full professors at European and American universities and senior leaders at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and won top prizes in national competitions. Before returning to China to take up a position as a Fudan Distinguished Professor, he worked for more than 20 years at European and American universities and public-diplomacy think tanks, including the Faculty of Law and Faculty of Economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the East-West Center in the United States. Earlier in his career, he worked at the State Planning Commission and concurrently served as a member of its Communist Youth League Committee.