Political Science professor, Dennis Hickey,  recently returned from Beijing China where he met with scholars, academics and officials to discuss the implications of the forthcoming presidential election in Taiwan slated for January 16.

While in Beijing Dr. Hickey had lunch with Aaron Kruse.  Aaron graduated from the MGS program in 2014.  After a year with the MSU program in Dalian, he accepted a position as a lecturer with Tsinghua University in Beijing.

The pollution was extreme.  Dr. Hickey commented, “I’ve lived in China for years and I’ve never seen anything as bad as I saw the last several days.  Every time you think it cannot get any worse–it gets worse.  Yesterday, they closed all the runways except one at the airport. Our pilot announced he could not tell us where we were in the long line to take off because he could only faintly see the outline and lights of the one plane in front of us.   I cannot believe we took off in that poisonous soup–but we did”.

Dr. Hickey has been invited to Taiwan to serve as an election observer and participate in a post-election symposium.