2018 Commons Workshop will be held on 13th October 2018 at School ofPublic Policy and Management, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. This is thefirst professional academic conference of China around commons and the theme ofthis year’s workshop is the 50th Anniversary of “Governing the Commons”. Thisworkshop is organized by the School of Public Policy and Management at TsinghuaUniversity. Prof. Yahua Wang, Associate Dean of the School of Public Policy andManagement, Tsinghua University, will chair this workshop.

       According to the typical classification of the Western economics, thecommons narrowly refer to the common-pool resources of difficult exclusion andhigh subtractability, including irrigation, land, forest, grassland, fisheryand so on. A broader concept of the commons has been developed to sharedresources, such as city commons, internet, climate, shared economy andknowledge. The study of the commons is a relatively new research field inChina. This field comprises of an interdisciplinary domain with a theoreticaland an applied focus on advancing understanding, the improvement of commonsgovernance and management, and the crafting of sustainable solutions forcommunity-based natural resources or any other form of shared resources. The Commons Workshop is a knowledge platform that aims to bring togetherresearchers, practitioners and policymakers from different disciplines and sectorsin order to discuss, understand, and promote the study of commons in China aswell as in the rest of the world.

      In the 50th anniversary of “Governing the Commons”, 2018 Commons Workshopfocuses on the practice, policy and theory of the commons governance under the Chinese contexts. China has a lot of good traditions in governing the commons,but entering the new century, the commons governance and policy in China isfacing new challenges due to rapid economic growth and urbanization thateducated middle class and expanding affluent people have steadily growingdemand of resource uses for a better standard of living and quality of life.The Workshop will invite the leading scholars well-known worldwide in thisprofessional field to deliver keynote speeches, but also invite scholars toexplore the commons governance in China and promote the discipline constructionand policy application.

     We welcome papers andabstracts in English or Chinese (English is priority) with a focus on Chinesecommons governance, innovation and transition in China, including:

1. Property rights and governing the commons;
2. Governing the commons in China;
3. Governing the traditional commons (e.g. irrigation, land, forest,grassland, fishery …);
4. Governing the emergence commons (e.g. city commons, internet,climate, shared economy, knowledge …).