BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies - ECPv6.15.12.2//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME:Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20150308T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20151101T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20160313T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20161106T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20170312T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20171105T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20180311T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20181104T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20190310T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20191103T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20200308T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20201101T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20210314T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20211107T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20220313T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20221106T060000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210413T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210413T213000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20210120T142132Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154940Z UID:10112-1618344000-1618349400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series featuring Taomo Zhou - Leveraging Liminality: Shenzhen and the Origins of China’s Reform and Opening DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Taomo Zhou\, Assistant Professor of History\, Nanyang Technological University\, Singapore \nImmediately 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 economy in the late 1970s. This talk examines prototypes of the SEZ in Bao’an County\, the precursor of Shenzhen during the Mao era (1949-1976). Between 1949 and 1978\, Bao’an was a liminal space where state endeavors to establish a socialist economy were challenged by capitalist influences from the adjacent British Crown Colony. To create an enclave of exception to socialism\, communist cadres in Bao’an promoted individualized\, duty-free cross-border trade and informal foreign investment schemes as early as 1961. Although beholden to the inward-looking planned economy and stymied by radical leftist campaigns\, these local improvisations formed the foundation for the SEZ—the very hallmark of Deng Xiaoping’s economic statecraft. \nTaomo Zhou is an Assistant Professor of History at Nanyang Technological University\, Singapore\, specializing in modern Chinese and Southeast Asian history. Taomo’s first book\, Migration in the Time of Revolution: China\, Indonesia and the Cold War (Cornell University Press\, 2019)\, was selected as one of the Best Books of 2020 by Foreign Affairs. Taomo is working on a new research project on Shenzhen—the first Special Economic Zone of China—and its connections with the Export Processing Zones and free ports across Southeast Asia. This research is funded by a Tier 1 grant from the Ministry of Education\, Singapore. \nPart of the Modern China Lecture Series \nPresented via Zoom Webinar URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/taomo-zhou-leveraging-liminality-the-border-town-of-baoan-and-the-origins-of-chinas-reform-and-opening/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210323T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210323T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20200825T160542Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154940Z UID:9535-1616515200-1616522400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series featuring E. Elena Songster - Presenting the Panda: The Symbolic Transformation of Animal to Ambassador to Advocate DESCRIPTION:Speaker: E. Elena Songster\, Professor of History\, History Department\, Saint Mary’s College of California \nThe 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 and Conservation of China’s Modern Icon (Oxford UP)\,  examining the history of the emergence of the giant panda as a national icon and the impact it has had on foreign policy and the natural environment. \nElena Songster’s research focuses on the environmental history of modern China.  She is currently researching medicinals found in nature through a historical lens. Other research projects include the history of snow leopard conservation and forestry history. Elena Songster teaches classes on Chinese History\, Japanese History\, Asian History\, and World History.  She has also taught in the Collegiate Seminar Program\, and JanTerm and serves on the Advisory Board for the Global and Regional Studies Program. \nPart of the Modern China Lecture Series \nPresented via Zoom Webinar URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/e-elena-songster-modern-china-lecture/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210302T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210302T173000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20210120T144159Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154940Z UID:10114-1614700800-1614706200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series featuring Andrew B. Liu - Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India DESCRIPTION:Read the transcript for the event here. \nSpeaker: Andrew B. Liu\, Assistant Professor of History\, Villanova University \nTea 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 and Indian tea\, Andrew B. Liu challenges past economic histories premised on the technical “divergence” between the West and the Rest\, arguing instead that seemingly traditional technologies and practices were central to modern capital accumulation across Asia. He shows how competitive pressures compelled Chinese merchants to adopt abstract industrial conceptions of time\, while colonial planters in India pushed for labor indenture laws to support factory-style tea plantations. Characterizations of China and India as premodern backwaters\, he explains\, were themselves the historical result of new notions of political economy adopted by Chinese and Indian nationalists\, who discovered that these abstract ideas corresponded to concrete social changes in their local surroundings. Together\, these stories point toward a more flexible and globally oriented conceptualization of the history of capitalism in China and India. \nAndrew B. Liu is assistant professor of history at Villanova University\, where his research focuses on China\, transnational Asia\, political economy\, and comparative history. \nThis event co-sponsored by The Joint Center for History and Economics\, Harvard University. \nPart of the Modern China Lecture Series \nPresented via Zoom Webinar URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-featuring-andrew-liu/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210209T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210209T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20200825T155906Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154940Z UID:9533-1612886400-1612893600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series featuring Eddy U - A New Approach to Studying the Chinese Intellectual DESCRIPTION:Read the transcript of the event here. \nSpeaker: Eddy U\, Professor of Sociology\, University of California\, Davis \nNo 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 builds on my recently published book and illustrates how the “intellectual” (zhishifenzi) in China evolved from an obscure classification of people during the 1920s to embodied subjects locatable everywhere after the 1949 revolution. This transformation of the intellectual changed Chinese society\, intensifying mass surveillance\, political education\, and other governing practices. My analytical approach moves the study of the intellectual in modern China into new terrains. I end with an interpretation of the current situation in Hong Kong. \nEddy U is Professor of Sociology at the University of California\, Davis. He grew up in Hong Kong and moved to the United States in the late 1980s. His book\, Creating the Intellectual: Chinese Communism and the Rise of a Classification (UC Press\, 2019)\, won the Barrington Moore Book Award given by the American Sociological Association. \nPart of the Modern China Lecture Series \nPresented via Zoom Webinar URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/eddy-u-modern-china-lecture/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20201110T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201110T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20200729T143358Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154940Z UID:9446-1605024000-1605031200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series Featuring Covell Meyskens - Mao's Massive Military Industrial Campaign to Defend Cold War China DESCRIPTION:Read the transcript of the event here. \nSpeaker: Covell Meyskens\, Assistant Professor of Chinese History\, Naval Postgraduate School \nIn 1964\, the Chinese Communist Party made a momentous policy decision. In response to rising tensions with the United States and Soviet Union\, a top-secret massive military-industrial complex in the mountains of inland China was built\, which the CCP hoped to keep hidden from enemy bombers. Mao named this the Third Front. The Third Front received more government investment than any other developmental initiative of the Mao era\, and yet this huge industrial war machine\, which saw the mobilization of 15 million people\, was not officially acknowledged for over a decade and a half. Drawing on a rich collection of archival documents\, memoirs\, and oral interviews\, Covell Meyskens provides the first history of the Third Front campaign. He shows how the militarization of Chinese industrialization linked millions of everyday lives to the global Cold War\, merging global geopolitics with local change. \nCovell Meyskens is Assistant Professor of Chinese history in the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval Postgraduate School. He works on capitalist and anti-capitalist development in modern China\, especially as it relates to building big infrastructure projects. His first book\, Mao’s Third Front: Militarization of Cold War China\, published by Cambridge University Press\, examines how the Chinese Communist Party industrialized inland regions in order to protect socialist China from American and Soviet threats. His second book project\, The Three Gorges Dam: Building a Hydraulic Engine for China\, analyzes state-led efforts to transform China’s Three Gorges region into a hydraulic engine to power national development in the twentieth century. Currently\, he is in the process of developing a third project on changing conceptions of national security in modern China. Dr. Meyskens also curates a website of images of everyday life in Maoist China. Meyskens is the author of articles and book chapters on Chinese railroads\, the Three Gorges Dam\, Sino-North Korean relations\, Maoist visual culture\, globalization\, radio in Mao’s China\, and racial violence in the Pacific War. \nPart of the Modern China Lecture Series \nPresented via Zoom Webinar URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/covell-meyskens-modern-china-lecture/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20201027T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201027T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20200729T143120Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154940Z UID:9445-1603814400-1603821600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series Featuring Fei-Hsien Wang - Everybody Loves Qianlong: Vernacular Fantasies\, Cultural Consumption\, and the “Prosperous Age” in Post-Imperial China DESCRIPTION:Read the transcript of the event here. \nSpeaker: Fei-Hsien Wang\, Associate Professor\, Department of History\, Indiana University Bloomington \nExamining 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 cultural economy and political climate transforms overtime\, new stories and myths about Qianlong emerge to satisfy the changing desires of the audience as well as the political authorities. These popular cultural products have gradually shaped a common historical memory that takes the place of Qing “history” in most (Han) Chinese audience’s minds\, despite generations of specialists’ effort to debunk it. The voracious fascination with this most accomplished Manchu emperor\, however\, has been an uneasy one. At the core of the vernacular fantasies of Qianlong lies the unsolved tension between the modern Han/Chinese nationalism and the legacy of a non-Han “prosperous age” (shengshi). The unofficial endorsement by the PRC leaders of using High Qing to talk about a great China further prolongs the career of the vernacular Qianlong. \nFei-Hsien Wang is a historian of modern China\, with a particular interest in how information\, ideas\, and practices were produced\, transmitted\, and consumed across different societies in East Asia. Fei-Hsien Wang’s research has revolved around the relations between knowledge\, commerce\, and political authority after 1800. \nCo-sponsored by the Joint Center for History and Economics. \nPart of the Modern China Lecture Series \nPresented via Zoom Webinar URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/fei-hsien-wang-modern-china-lecture/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20201013T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201013T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20200729T142310Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154941Z UID:9444-1602604800-1602612000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series Featuring Gina Anne Tam - Dialect and the Making of Modern China: From Republican Revolutionaries to Hong Kong Protesters DESCRIPTION:Read the transcript for the event here. \nSpeaker: Gina Anne Tam\, Assistant Professor of History\, Trinity University \nTaking aim at the conventional narrative that standard\, national languages transform ‘peasants’ into citizens\, this talk will trace the history of the Chinese nation and national identity on fangyan – languages like Shanghainese\, Cantonese\, and dozens of others that are categorically different from the Chinese national language\, Mandarin. It shows how\, on the one hand\, linguists\, policy-makers\, bureaucrats and workaday educators framed fangyan as non-standard ‘variants’ of the Chinese language\, subsidiary in symbolic importance to standard Mandarin. I simultaneously highlight\, on the other hand\, the 1920s folksong collectors\, communist-period playwrights\, contemporary hip-hop artists and popular protestors in Hong Kong who argued that fangyan were more authentic and representative of China’s national culture and its history. From the late Qing through the present\, these intertwined visions of the Chinese nation – one spoken in one voice\, one spoken in many – interacted and shaped one another\, and in the process\, shaped the basis for national identity itself. \nGina Anne Tam is an assistant professor of Chinese history at Trinity University in San Antonio\, Texas. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2016\, and her research and teaching focus on the construction of collective identity– national belonging\, ethnicity and race– in modern China. In addition to her book Dialect and Nationalism in China\, 1860-1960\, she has also published peer-reviewed work in Twentieth-Century China\, and has written about the relevance of her work to current events in Foreign Affairs\, The Nation\, and Dissent. Her new project will be a global history of Chinese restauranteurs and the making of pan-Asian cuisine in the twentieth century. \nPart of the Modern China Lecture Series \nPresented via Zoom Webinar URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/gina-anne-tam-modern-china-lecture/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200922T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200922T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20200729T141244Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154941Z UID:9443-1600790400-1600797600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:MODERN CHINA LECTURE SERIES FEATURING Sören Urbanksy - Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian border DESCRIPTION:Read the transcript of the event here. \nSpeaker: Sören Urbanksy\, Research Fellow\, German Historical Institute Washington \nThe 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 sedentary people mingled\, where the imperial interests of Russia and later the Soviet Union clashed with those of Qing and Republican China and Japan\, and where the world’s two largest Communist regimes hailed their friendship and staged their enmity. In this talk\, Sören Urbansky will discuss his recent book\, Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian border\, which examines the demarcation’s remarkable transformation—from a vaguely marked frontier in the seventeenth century to its twentieth-century incarnation as a tightly patrolled barrier girded by watchtowers\, barbed wire\, and border guards. \nPart of the Modern China Lecture Series \nPresented via Zoom Webinar URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/soren-urbanksy-modern-china-lecture/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190507T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190507T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20180801T181240Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154941Z UID:7410-1557244800-1557252000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Wen-hsin Yeh - Vast Ocean\, Small People: The Aborigines of Taiwan DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Wen-hsin Yeh\, University of California at Berkeley \nFor centuries under the Ming and the Qing\, indigenous communities of Taiwan (i.e. the Austronesian-speaking tribal groups in the mountains and on the Pacific side of the island) led distinct styles of life in a state of relative insularity. That insularity ended in the 19th century when Western and Japanese naval vessels appeared on the Pacific. In response\, the Qing cut roads into the mountains and sent troops down the coast.  These events marked a new beginning for the aborigines who\, labeled as headhunters and savages\, came under successive regimes of colonial rule. Things changed again towards the end of the 20th century.  China adopted a “National Ocean Strategy” by which the People’s Navy would routinely project its presence on the Pacific.  And Taiwan\, out of a determination to deliver transitional justice\, issued in 2016 a presidential apology to the tribes as long-suffering victims of historical injustice. \nThis presentation on Taiwan’s indigenous people takes the Pacific as a point of reference to build a historical narrative.  In doing so\, the talk seeks to position Taiwan in a changing world of connecting oceans. URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/wen-hsin-yeh-modern-china-lecture-series/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190423T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190423T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20180801T180936Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154941Z UID:7408-1556035200-1556042400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Felix Boecking | Chinese trade wars in historical perspective— No Great Wall: Trade\, Tariffs\, and Nationalism in Republican China\, 1927-1945 DESCRIPTION: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. \n \nSpeaker: Felix Boecking\, University of Edinburgh \nNo 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 of power in China lay in the incompetence of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government. It argues instead that during the second Sino-Japanese War\, China’s international trade\, the Nationalist government’s tariff revenues\, and hence its fiscal policy and state-making project all collapsed. Drawing on the historical lessons of my research\, in this talk\, I will also discuss the unintended consequences of protectionism\, the difficulties of strategising trade wars\, and the differences between trade wars and real wars. \nFelix Boecking is a Senior Lecturer in Modern Chinese Economic and Political History at the University of Edinburgh\, UK\, and currently a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. Among his research interests are China’s political economy\, the history of economics in the People’s Republic of China\, and the history of China’s foreign relations. His current project at the Wilson Center is “Economics on the Edge: An Intellectual History of Economists in the PRC since 1949.” URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/felix-boecking-modern-china-lecture-series/ LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190326T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190326T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20180801T180637Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154941Z UID:7407-1553616000-1553623200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Anne Reinhardt - Navigating Semi-Colonialism: Shipping\, Sovereignty\, and Nation-Building in China 1860-1937 DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Anne Reinhardt\, Williams College \nChina’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.  In this talk\, Anne Reinhardt will discuss her recent book\, Navigating Semi-colonialism: Shipping\, Sovereignty\, and Nation-Building in China\, 1860-1937\, which examines steam navigation as a constitutive element of the treaty system in order to elucidate both conceptual and concrete aspects of the semi-colonial regime. URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/anne-reinhardt-modern-china-lecture-series/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190213T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190213T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20180801T180351Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154941Z UID:7405-1550073600-1550080800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Zuoyue Wang - Transnational Science in Modern China: From May Fourth to the Cold War and Beyond DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Zuoyue Wang\, California State Polytechnic University\, Pomona \nHow 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 Republican era\, the making of the atomic bomb during the Mao years\, the experiences of Chinese American scientists during the Cold War\, to the emergence of dissident scientists such as Fang Lizhi and the migration of Chinese students/scientists to the US during the reform era. Revisiting John Fairbank’s impact-response thesis\, it argues that we need to examine both how the world changed China and how China changed the world in science and technology. \nThis event is co-sponsored by the Asia Center Science and Technology Seminar Series URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/zuoyue-wang-modern-china-lecture-series/ LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20181113T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20181113T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20180801T175845Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154941Z UID:7403-1542124800-1542132000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Denise Ho - New Exhibitions and China's Cultural Revolution: Rethinking Class\, Material\, Culture\, and Propaganda DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Denise Y. Ho\, Yale University \nListen to our “Harvard on China” podcast interview with Denise Y. Ho. \n \nDownload and read the transcript of this podcast interview. \nDenise Y. Ho is assistant professor of twentieth-century Chinese history at Yale University\, and the author of “Curating Revolution: Politics on Display of Mao’s China” (2018). Using a wide variety of primary sources\, including Shanghai’s municipal and district archives and oral history\, “Curating Revolution” depicts displays of revolution and history\, politics and class\, and art and science. Analyzing China’s “socialist museums” and “new exhibitions\,” Ho demonstrates how Mao-era exhibitionary culture both reflected and made revolution. \nDenise Y. Ho is an historian of modern China\, with a particular focus on the social and cultural history of the Mao period (1949-1976). She is also interested in urban history\, the study of information and propaganda\, and material culture. Ho teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on modern and contemporary China\, the history of Shanghai\, the uses of the past in modern China\, and the historiography of the Republican era and the PRC. URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/denise-ho-modern-china-lecture-series/ LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20181002T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20181002T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20180801T175607Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154941Z UID:7401-1538496000-1538503200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Tansen Sen - India\, China\, and the World: A Connected History DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Tansen Sen\, New York University Shanghai \nBy focusing on the early material exchanges\, transmissions of knowledge and technologies between ancient India and ancient China; the networks of exchange during the colonial period; and some of the less-known facets of interactions between the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China\, this presentation argues that the analysis of India-China connections must extend beyond the traditional frameworks of nation-states or bilateralism. Instead\, it is proposed that that a wide canvas of space\, people\, objects\, sources\, and timeframe is needed to fully comprehend the interactions between India and China in the past and during the contemporary period. It is argued that these interactions were multidirectional\, involved people from diverse parts of the world\, and were not constrained by the entities called “India” and “China.” The presentation also examines the ideas of “connected histories\,” “circulatory connections\,” “convergence\,” “contact zones\,” and “disjuncture” as the conceptual methods for studying transregional and transcultural connections and exchanges. \nTansen Sen is Professor of history and the Director of the Center for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai\, and Global Network Professor at New York University. Previously he was a faculty at the City University of New York and the founding head of the Nalanda Sriwijaya Center at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies\, Singapore. He is the author of Buddhism\, Diplomacy\, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations\, 600-1400 (2003; 2016) and India\, China\, and the World: A Connected History (2017; 2018). He has co-authored (with Victor H. Mair) Traditional China in Asian and World History (2012)\, edited Buddhism across Asia: Networks of Material\, Cultural and Intellectual Exchange (2014)\, and co-edited (with Burkhard Schnepel) Travelling Pasts: The Politics of Cultural Heritage in the Indian Ocean World (under review). He is currently working on a book about Zheng He’s maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century and co-editing (with Engseng Ho) the Cambridge History of the Indian Ocean\, volume 1. URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/tansen-sen-modern-china-lecture-series/ LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20180926T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20180926T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20180801T175335Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154941Z UID:7400-1537977600-1537984800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Fabio Lanza - Liberation through Labor? The Urban Commune Experiment in Beijing DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Fabio Lanza\, University of Arizona \nIn the years between 1958 and 1962\, the Urban Commune movement was promoted as a radical effort to change the daily lives of city residents. By inserting women into the “productive” life of factory work\, the movement also aimed at achieving a new form of everyday\, based on a true equality of gender relationships\, one achieved through the shared creativity of manual labor. While the movement failed\, it nonetheless brought to the fore some of the crucial tensions that marred the search for a socialist everyday: between participatory democracy and state hierarchy\, between production and liberation\, and between labor and gender equality. URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/fabio-lanza-modern-china-lecture-series/ LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20180925T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20180925T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20180801T175201Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154942Z UID:7398-1537891200-1537898400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Panel Discussion: The End of Concern: Maoist China\, Activism\, and Asian Studies DESCRIPTION:Panelists:\nFabio Lanza\, University of Arizona\nEllen Schrecker\, Yeshiva University\nAndrew Gordon\, Harvard University\nJoseph Esherick\, University of California San Diego\nSugata Bose\, Harvard University\nLien-Hang Nguyen\, Columbia University\nBruce Cumings\, University of Chicago \nModerator: Karen Thornber\, Harvard University Asia Center \nOrganized by: Arunabh Ghosh\, Harvard University \nCo-Sponsored by:\nFairbank Center for Chinese Studies\nHarvard University Asia Center\nReischauer Institute for Japanese Studies\nKorea Institute\nMittal South Asia Institute \nListen again on Soundcloud: URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/panel-discussion-the-end-of-concern-maoist-china-activism-and-asian-studies/ LOCATION:CGIS South\, Tsai Auditorium (S010)\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States CATEGORIES:Co-Sponsored Lectures,Conference and Workshops,Events of Interest,Modern China Lecture,Special Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20180911T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20180911T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20180801T174419Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154942Z UID:7396-1536681600-1536688800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Jennifer Altehenger - A History of Legal Lessons: law\, propaganda\, and the state in socialist China DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Jennifer Altehenger\, King’s College London \nIn 2016\, the PRC embarked on the seventh five-year plan for the popularization of law. Today\, the dissemination of basic legal knowledge is an established part of CCP governance\, closely associated with the extensive legal reforms that followed the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Yet people learned about laws under state auspices throughout the twentieth-century (and before). Following the establishment of the PRC in 1949\, the CCP carried out numerous campaigns to get people to study and implement key national laws such as the Marriage Law\, Election Law\, and state constitutions. Teaching and learning laws was part of mass line politics\, intended to make laws accessible and transform people into law-making and law-abiding socialist citizens who contributed to China’s liberation. This talk – part of research for a recent book – shows why the CCP cared about disseminating laws from early on\, how law propaganda was produced\, circulated\, and censored\, and how people responded to learning about laws. Far from a simple propaganda exercise\, law propaganda contributed to fostering a legal culture in China that bolstered and threatened CCP rule at the same time. \nJennifer Altehenger is a Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese History at King’s College London. She is the author of Legal Lessons: Popularizing Laws in the People’s Republic of China\, 1949-1989 (Harvard University Asia Center\, 2018) and has also published on the history of propaganda production\, information\, lexicography\, political satire\, and on Communist China’s links to other socialist countries before 1989. Funded by the British Academy and an Arts and Humanities Research Council leadership fellowship\, her current work examines the social\, economic\, and cultural history of everyday material culture and industrial design in China after 1949. URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/jennifer-altehenger-modern-china-lecture-series/ LOCATION:CGIS South S020\, Belfer Case Study Room\, 1730 Cambridge St.\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20170508T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20170508T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20170111T174144Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154942Z UID:4663-1494259200-1494266400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Can Computation Change the Study of Chinese Culture and History? DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Richard Jean So\, University of Chicago \nThe emergence of large corpora of digitized cultural and historical texts and new methods in text mining and analysis have made possible a new form of computational analysis for the humanities and China Studies. The question and challenge is whether these new methods and “data” will enrich our study of Chinese culture and history or simply “tell us what we already know.” In this talk\, I utilize a large corpus of Republican-era Chinese cultural and political journals and methods in Natural Language Processing to demonstrate that indeed\, computation can not only reframe and challenge existing scholarship in China Studies\, but produce radically new interpretations and arguments\, as well as entire new conceptual frameworks for the study of modern China. I specifically develop a case study focused on the evolution and transformation of the era’s cultural discourse in relation to other significant discourses\, such as politics and media. \n  URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-richard-so/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20170418T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20170418T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20170111T174626Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154942Z UID:4667-1492531200-1492538400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series: Ryōdōraku (良導絡) in New China: Sino-Japanese Medical Exchange in the 1950s and the Role of Machines in East Asian Medical Modernity DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Ruth Rogaski\, Vanderbilt University \nIn December of 1957\, a medical delegation from the People’s Republic of China visited Japan as part of a decade-long series of semi-official cultural exchanges between the two former enemies. The delegation brought back a “Nakatani Ryōdōraku electrodermometer”—a scientific apparatus which\, according to its inventor\, Nakatani Yoshio\, could be used to demonstrate an electromagnetic phenomenon on the surface of the human body that was remarkably similar to the meridians of Chinese medicine. My paper uses this episode of medical mobility to explore the role of machines in attempts to establish the ontological basis for Chinese medicine in twentieth century East Asia. \nProbing the “electrical genealogy” of the Nakatani machine in Japan since the Meiji period illuminates how Japanese physicians pursued the scientific underpinnings of traditional medical concepts by creatively employing trends in European and Russian physiological research. While most Sino-Japanese exchanges around the modernization of traditional medicine were interrupted by the war (although some practitioners sought medical unity through empire in the 1930s and 40s)\, medical exchanges were renewed surprisingly quickly in the 1950s. Chinese translations of Japanese texts about the biological basis of acupuncture entered into ongoing PRC debates about the nature of meridians– debates that had emerged in China in the 1930s and continued in the politically complex era of medical reform in the 1950s. The arrival of the Nakatani machine highlighted the schisms among Chinese physicians regarding the role of science and classical theories in modernizing Chinese medicine. In conclusion\, the paper examines the continuing use of the Ryōdōraku machine (and similar devices) in acupuncture practice today\, and considers the century-long desire to visualize the invisible in Chinese medicine. URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-ruth-rogaski/ LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20170410T110000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20170410T130000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20170111T175444Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T155019Z UID:4673-1491822000-1491829200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture: Governing the Souls of Chinese Modernity DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Andrew Kipnis\, Professor of Anthropology in the College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University\n\nPhilippe Descola argues that human societies can be categorized by the ways in which they utilize broad assumptions about interiority and physicality\, where interiority refers to something similar to what Edward Tyler and James Frazer meant by “soul”. In Descola’s scheme\, traditional Chinese culture\, which gives play to infinite variability in both interiority and physicality\, is strongly “analogist”. In contrast\, Descola defines modern\, Western societies as “naturalist”. We moderns see nature or physicality as universally fixed\, but culture or interiority as variable. Contemporary China is rapidly modernizing and scientising. In Descola’s terms\, its culture should be transitioning from an analogist one to a naturalist one. Through an examination of practices of memorialisation and funerary ritual in urban China\, as well as Chinese Communist Party attempts to steer the evolution of these practices in reaction to “modernity\,” this paper attempts to tease out what is modern about the conceptions of soul implicit in contemporary Chinese dealings with death.\n\nAndrew Kipnis is Professor of Anthropology in the College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University. His most recent book is From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat (University of California Press\, 2016). For ten years he was co-editor of The China Journal. URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-andrew-kipnis/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20170321T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20170321T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20170111T174953Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154956Z UID:4670-1490112000-1490119200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series: The Significance of the Frontier in Twentieth Century Chinese History DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Shellen Wu\, University of Tennessee\, Knoxville \nThe 1890s set off an unprecedented rush for the last remaining unclaimed lands around the world. Developments in the preceding century saw the social sciences and disciplines like geography and agronomy connecting Europe\, the Americas\, and Asia. The educated elite from around the world increasingly spoke a common language of science and the social sciences.From the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries\, the discourse of endless frontiers stretched from Eastern Europe\, Soviet Central Asia and Siberia\, to Inner Mongolia\, and Western China\, in each case becoming absorbed into long-running historical concerns about territory and identity.These disparate places shared a centrally planned vision of turning the frontiers into fertile agricultural heartlands. The global circulation of imperialist and geopolitical discourse helped to shape the modern Chinese geographical imagination. Geomodernity in China emerged from this fundamental spatial reconceptualization of Chinese territoriality. URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-shellen-wu/ LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20170307T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20170307T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20170207T214113Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154956Z UID:4760-1488902400-1488909600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Doubts about the Chinese current of "doubting antiquity" and its critics DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Rudolf G. Wagner\nFairbank Center Associate at Harvard University\, and Cluster Asia and Europe Associate at Heidelberg University\, Germany. \nThis is a study of the background\, impact\, and cost of the “doubting antiquity\,” or yigu\, current associated with the Gushi bian collection that followed a strong political agenda of undoing the authority of the orthodox view of Chinese history with the authority of scholarly criticism. \nIt traces its background against the claims by the initiator and editor of this collection\, Gu Jiegang\, that his inspirations all came from the Chinese scholarly tradition to an international discussion about the relationship between myth and history and the proper ways to read myth\, a discussion that had its origins in German classical philology and Protestant theology\, and reached China via Japanese contributions. \nIt sketches the international impact of the yigu current in a case study about the strategies for dating and editing the Laozi before the recent finds of early manuscripts. Finally it outlines the cost of the strong political agenda of both the yigu current and its present-day critics by showing how the focus on the genuine/fake issue left many highly relevant questions concerning the methodology of editing the newly-found manuscripts unasked and unanswered. URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/doubts-about-the-chinese-current-of-doubting-antiquity-and-its-critics/ LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20170214T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20170214T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20170111T172646Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154956Z UID:4660-1487088000-1487095200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series: Collecting and Using Diaries and the Writing of PRC History DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Fan Shitao\, Beijing Normal University URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-collecting-and-using-diaries-and-the-writing-of-prc-history/ LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20161116T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20161116T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20161102T155607Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154956Z UID:4316-1479312000-1479319200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:The First World War and the Idea of "China" DESCRIPTION:This lecture will focus on the meaning of the First World War to China and China’s role in the Great War. It will pay special attention to the issue how the Great War and its aftermath provided a momentum for the Chinese and the world to think about the ideas of China and Chineseness. Most importantly\, this talk will explain why and how the Chinese seized the Great War to achieve their great transformation. \nSpeaker: Prof. Xu Guoqi\, University of Hong Kong\nChair: Arunabh Ghosh\, Harvard University URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/the-first-world-war-and-the-idea-of-china/ LOCATION:CGIS Knafel\, K050\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20161020T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20161020T180000 DTSTAMP:20260510T124436 CREATED:20161006T201258Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T154956Z UID:3848-1476979200-1476986400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture: Varieties of Chinese Utopianism\, 1900-1940 DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Peter Zarrow\, University of Connecticut \nUtopianism was a major motif in early twentieth century Chinese political thought.  Utopianism was not only widespread\, it became constitutive of political thought.  Utopianism did so in the form of the utopian impulse rather than full-fledged utopianism.  The “utopian impulse” is revealed in the context of generally non-utopian ideas.  While not all thinkers were influenced by utopianism\, many were—and the utopian impulse revealed in their work took very different forms.  I consider four case studies.  First\, Kang Youwei: he was author of the only full-fledged utopian scheme; his utopia was based on metaphysical cosmopolitanism.  Second\, Cai Yuanpei: Cai’s neo-Kantian aestheticism was another form of metaphysical thinking that formed the basis of his so-called philosophical anarchism.  Third\, Chen Duxiu: Chen’s secular utopian interpretation of democracy infused his liberal and Trotskyite phases (less so his Leninist phase).  And finally\, Hu Shi: Hu’s scientism led him to processual utopianism and shaped his liberalism and his critique of traditional culture.  There were certainly other varieties of utopianism\, both metaphysical and secular\, and the utopian impulse appeared in fiction as well as political writing\, but these four cases enable us to begin to examine the relationship between utopianism and varieties of political thought. \nPeter Zarrow is professor of History at the University of Connecticut.  His research focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of modern China.  Zarrow is currently writing a monograph on utopian thought in China in the twentieth century and has begun a project on the history of the Forbidden City.  He is the author most recently of After Empire: The Conceptual Transformation of the Chinese State\, 1885-1924 (Stanford\, 2012) and Educating China: Knowledge\, Society\, and Textbooks in a Modernizing World\, 1902-1937 (Cambridge\, 2015). URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-varieties-of-chinese-utopianism-1900-1940/ CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture ATTACH;FMTTYPE=: END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR