Speaker: Zuoyue Wang, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona How have transnational exchanges, especially with the United States, in science and technology shaped and reshaped modern China in the last century since the May Fourth Movement of 1919? This talk explores key players and events in this history from the Science Society of China during the […]

Speaker: Anne Reinhardt, Williams College China’s status in the world of expanding European empires of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has long been under dispute.  Its unequal relations with multiple powers, secured through a system of treaties rather than through colonization, has invited debated over the degree and significance of outside control and local sovereignty.  […]

Listen to an interview with Felix Boecking on our "Harvard on China" podcast. Download and read the podcast transcript here Download and read the podcast transcript here. Speaker: Felix Boecking, University of Edinburgh No Great Wall (Harvard Asia Center, 2017), an in-depth study of Nationalist tariff policy, fundamentally challenges the widely accepted idea that the key to the Communist seizure […]

Speaker: Wen-hsin Yeh, University of California at Berkeley For centuries under the Ming and the Qing, indigenous communities of Taiwan (i.e. the Austronesian-speaking tribal groups in the mountains and on […]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C34LVzYgMuc&feature=youtu.be https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/beyond-the-steppe-frontier-a-history-of-the-sino-russian-border-with-soren-urbansky Read the transcript of the event here. Speaker: Sören Urbanksy, Research Fellow, German Historical Institute Washington The Sino-Russian border, once the world’s longest land border, was special in many ways. It not only divided the two largest Eurasian empires, it was also the place where European and Asian civilizations met, where nomads and […]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALs0xHS1uIg https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/everybody-loves-qianlong-with-fei-hsien-wang Read the transcript of the event here. Speaker: Fei-Hsien Wang, Associate Professor, Department of History, Indiana University Bloomington Examining a wide range of cultural products and genres from the late nineteenth century to the present, this talk traces the evolution of the vernacular myths and popular fantasies about Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799). As China’s […]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80ptVvXWrKI https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/a-new-approach-to-studying-the-chinese-intellectual-with-eddy-u?in=fairbank-center/sets/public-lecture-series-fairbank Read the transcript of the event here. Speaker: Eddy U, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Davis No system of rule has objectified the intellectual as much as communist rule of the twentieth century. Communist regimes codified, identified, and governed part of the general population as intellectuals based on Marxist thought. This talk […]

https://youtu.be/LM5J3E5pDmQ https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/tea-war-a-history-of-capitalism-in-china-and-india-with-andrew-b-liu?in=fairbank-center/sets/public-lecture-series-fairbank Read the transcript for the event here. Speaker: Andrew B. Liu, Assistant Professor of History, Villanova University Tea remains the world’s most popular commercial drink today, and at the turn of the twentieth century, it represented the largest export industry of both China and colonial India. In analyzing the global competition between Chinese […]

https://youtu.be/ogWW2WSGSio https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/presenting-the-panda-with-e-elena-songster?in=fairbank-center/sets/public-lecture-series-fairbank Speaker: E. Elena Songster, Professor of History, History Department, Saint Mary's College of California The giant panda stumbled into ambassador work. Profoundly successful, its diplomatic roles multiplied and evolved, but its persistent existence as an animal repeatedly reframed its role as a diplomat and beyond. Songster discusses findings from her book, Panda Nation: The Construction […]

https://youtu.be/dPpcJSF2k4w https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/leveraging-liminality-shenzhen-and-the-origins-of-chinas-reform-and-opening-with-taomo-zhou?in=fairbank-center/sets/public-lecture-series-fairbank Speaker: Taomo Zhou, Assistant Professor of History, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Immediately north of Hong Kong, Shenzhen is China’s most successful Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Commonly known as the “social laboratory” of reform and opening, Shenzhen was the foremost frontier for the People’s Republic’s adoption of market principles and entrance into the world […]