From “Images” to “Polycentric Connections”: Prof. David A. Palmer Moderates HKU Interdisciplinary Dialogue on the Belt and Road, as Liu Heung-shing’s Old Road New Connections Focuses on Human Connections
On 17 September 2026, the Communications and Public Affairs Office of The University of Hong Kong hosted the interdisciplinary public dialogue “Walls and Roads: Openness, Creativity, and the Belt and Road in Image and Thought,” moderated by Prof. David A. Palmer, Director of the Global Society and Sustainability Lab at HKU.
9/25/20265 min read
On 17 September 2026, the Communications and Public Affairs Office of The University of Hong Kong hosted an interdisciplinary public dialogue, “Walls and Roads: Openness, Creativity, and the Belt and Road in Image and Thought.” Centred on Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Mr Liu Heung-shing’s latest book, Old Road New Connections: China in the World, the event explored the human dimensions of the Belt and Road Initiative from the perspectives of photography, anthropology, urban design, globalisation and public communication. The dialogue was moderated by Professor David A. Palmer, Professor in the Department of Sociology and Director of the Global Society and Sustainability Lab, Faculty of Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, with opening remarks by Professor Wang Yang, Vice-President and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Institutional Advancement) of HKU.
In his sharing, Mr Liu reviewed his fifty-year career documenting changes in China and the world, which he summed up as “China 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0”: from a poor and closed China before reform and opening up, to a China that opened to the world through reform and opening up, and now to a China reaching out to the whole world and building deep connections with the globe through initiatives such as the Belt and Road. Over the past three years and more, he travelled to twenty-one countries and more than fifty regions, covering nearly 300,000 kilometres — from oil fields in Central Asia and high-speed rail in Southeast Asia to mines in Africa and ports in Europe and South America — seeking to answer through his lens a single question: as the Belt and Road moves from vision into reality, what exactly is changing? His answer ultimately rested on “people.” Beyond railways, ports and mines, his lens also captured those building these projects, ordinary people living nearby, and individuals moving between different languages, cultures and technologies. A cup of coffee, a wedding, a Chinese-language class — all become concrete glimpses of how large-scale transformation enters everyday life. “All I can do is just be there, listen, and press the shutter,” Mr Liu said.
In his opening remarks, Professor Wang Yang began with the photographic notion of the “decisive moment,” citing Mr Liu’s iconic 1981 photograph of a young man holding a Coca-Cola in the Forbidden City. He noted that such images move us not only because they record a historical moment, but because they capture the real emotions and expectations of ordinary people amid momentous change. “He shows the everyday life, the dignity and the shared experiences of the people who actually live at the intersection of these new roads and ancient walls,” Professor Wang said.
Around Mr Liu’s images, four scholars pursued the question from different disciplines: once the roads are actually built, what happens? Professor Liu Ningrong, Professor of Globalisation and Business at City University of Hong Kong and Founding Dean of the HKU Business School’s China Business College, spoke of the cognitive distance between people — physical distance can be shortened, but connecting people across cultures is far less simple. Professor Alain J. F. Chiaradia, Honorary Associate Professor at HKU’s Faculty of Architecture and Deputy Head of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, distinguished from an urban planning perspective between “connection” and genuine “accessibility.” Dr Joseba Estévez, Research Assistant Professor at the HKU Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and Deputy Director of the Global Society and Sustainability Lab, Faculty of Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, who has long conducted fieldwork in Laos, observed that railways, roads, smartphones and e-commerce are rapidly transforming local communities, but different groups enter this change at different speeds.
As moderator, Professor Palmer took the discussion further towards cross-cultural understanding. Picking up on Mr Liu’s “China 1.0, 2.0, 3.0” framework, he noted that in the China 1.0 stage, China was highly inward-looking; by China 2.0, China began to look outward, but its focus was almost exclusively on the West, especially the United States — when he lived in Chengdu in the 1990s, people talked almost only about America, occasionally about Britain, France, Canada and Japan, while countries of the Global South were scarcely part of their consciousness at all. In the China 3.0 stage, with the advancement of the Belt and Road, China’s focus has genuinely expanded to the whole world, and Chinese people are beginning to learn about many regions of which they previously knew nothing. Mr Liu’s book is an exemplification of this — of going out, discovering different societies and cultures, and interacting with them ever more deeply. Professor Palmer further pointed out that this process is reciprocal: countries of the Global South, which had likewise been highly focused on the West, are now, while “decentring” their attention towards China, also learning more about other parts of the world. What emerges is no longer a single, Western-centred system of connections, but a multiple, crisscrossing and polycentric system of connections.
During the interactive session, one audience member asked, from a journalist’s perspective: when different international narratives surround the Belt and Road, what kinds of human connections does one see upon actually entering the project sites? Another asked: in the face of large-scale infrastructure, do local communities see it as an opportunity they can actively grasp, or as an external change happening to them? The panellists responded from their respective research and field experience: different types of infrastructure have different impacts on communities; local residents are not merely a backdrop to grand narratives — they adapt, negotiate, and incorporate new roads, technologies and opportunities into their daily lives in their own ways.
The event concluded with a book signing by Mr Liu Heung-shing, allowing this conversation about roads, images and people to continue beyond the lens.
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