Speaker: Jishun Zhang, 2024-25 Professor Emeritus of the Si-Mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities of East China Normal University; Fairbank Center 2024-2025 Visiting Scholar

*This talk will be presented in Mandarin*

From April to May 2022, Shanghai’s 61-day COVID-19 lockdown saw the sudden reassertion of the once-dormant Residents’ Committees. Their resurgence raises critical questions: Is this the same institution as before? Why did it appear absent for decades? Did it dissolve or integrate into broader institutional frameworks? Was its revival driven by lingering revolutionary mobilization, a resurgence of Mao-era campaign-style governance, or specific contingencies? These inquiries underscore the enduring significance of grassroots governance in the PRC. The 2022 lockdown offers a lens to reassess Shanghai’s Residents’ Committees beyond the 1949 divide and challenge the assumed rupture of 1979, highlighting both continuities and transformations in CCP urban governance.

Jishun Zhang is Professor Emeritus of the Si-Mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities of East China Normal University. She studies the history of modern China, with a focus on Shanghai’s history. Her research specifically focuses on grassroots social governance and cultural transformation in the Mao era. She is working with Professor Yuhua Wang in the Harvard University Department of Government on her current project, “The Lane Revolution and Its Legacy: Revisiting Shanghai Neighborhood Committees in Mao’s Era.” 

Professor Zhang’s books include Chinese Intellectuals’ Views on America, 1943-1953, (Fudan University Press, 1999) and A City Displaced: Shanghai in the 1950s (Social Sciences Academic Press, 2015). Zhang is a graduate of Beijing Normal University and Fudan University, where she received her Ph.D. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of East Asia Studies at UC Berkeley in 1994-95 and was a coordinate professor in the Harvard-Yenching Institute in 2012-2013.