Events
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Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Jean Oi — China’s New Venture Capitalists? The Transformation of Local Government Financing Vehicles
CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, United StatesSpeaker: Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics, Department of Political Science; Senior Fellow, The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford UniversityIn the wake of COVID-19 and the property-market collapse, China’s local government financing vehicles (LGFVs)—entities created to borrow and invest on behalf of local governments—had accumulated more than $8 trillion in debt
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Structuring Chinese History: Diwang Tu 帝王圖, Nianbiao 年表, “Chinese Dynasties” Charts, and Paradigmatic Crisis in Chinese Historiography
CGIS South, Room S050 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: James Millward, Georgetown UniversityPeriodization by “Chinese dynasties” is a structural foundation of the historiography of continental eastern Eurasia, but even those passingly familiar with the field know the idea is beset with problems: The Chinese dynasties aren’t all “Chinese.” They weren’t all in the same place, but were scattered around geographical China and Inner
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Emergent Visons Film Screening — Zhuang Wei’s Witness: Return of the Survivor (庄炜的见证：幸存者归来)
CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, United StatesFollowed by a Q+A with filmmaker ZHUANG Wei. This film is part of a three-part series presenting documentaries from China’s Caochangdi Workstation, a collective of documentary filmmakers and performance artists whose work explores memory, history, and everyday life through long-term, participatory projects. Director’s Statement: “Returning to the unfamiliar Chaoshan homeland to live, I encountered my
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Everyday Occupation: American Soldiers and Chinese Civilians after World War II
Presented via ZoomSpeaker: Chunmei Du, Professor, Department of History, Lingnan University, Hong Kong; Associate, Harvard University Asia Center In this rich history of everyday encounters between US soldiers and Chinese civilians, Chunmei Du explores their entangled relations from the end of World War II to the founding of the People's Republic of China. Drawing upon official, popular and
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China Humanities Seminar featuring Yunxiao Xiao — Writing on Bamboo and Wood: Text Technologies in Early China
Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: Yunxiao Xiao, University of Washington This talk explores how written information was organized, edited, and transmitted through the ancient media of bamboo and wood. Drawing on excavated manuscripts from the Warring States through the Han, I examine three practices of bookmaking and information management before the age of paper: 1) designing layouts, 2) editing
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Urban China Lecture Series featuring Zhang Qingyong
Presented via ZoomSpeaker: Zhang Qingyong, Renmin University More information coming soon! Zoom meeting link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/94120080608 Venue
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Modern China Lecture Series featuring Fei-Hsien Wang — Modernization Theory and Historical Knowledge in Cold War Taiwan
Room K354, CGIS Knafel 1737 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: Fei-Hsien Wang, Associate Professor, Department of History, Indiana University Bloomington In 1973, the Institute of Modern History (IMH) at Academia Sinica launched an ambitious collaborative project to examine late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China through the lens of modernization theory. Over the next sixteen years, seventeen historians participated in “Modernization in China: A Regional
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Urban China Lecture Series featuring Susan Whiting — Illiberal Law and Development: Property Rights and Conflict over Land in China
Presented via ZoomSpeaker:Susan Whiting, University of Washington In Illiberal Law and Development, Susan H. Whiting advances institutional economic theory with original survey and fieldwork data, addressing two puzzles in Chinese political economy: how economic development has occurred despite insecure property rights and weak rule of law and how the Chinese state has maintained political control amid unrest.
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Sea Charts in the Eastern Half of Asia
Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: Yannan DING, Associate Professor, Historical Geography, Fudan University; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2026-27Chair/Discussant: Peter K. Bol, Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University Venue
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Urban China Lecture Series featuring Zhao Miaoxi
Presented via ZoomSpeaker: Zhao Miaoxi, South China University of Technology More information coming soon! Zoom meeting link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/94120080608 Venue
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China Humanities Seminar featuring Kerstin Storm — Old Age and Aging in Medieval Chinese Poetry
CGIS South Room S354 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, United StatesSpeaker: Kerstin Storm, University of Münster***Please note the different location for this talk in the series.*** Venue
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China Humanities Seminar featuring Wendy Swartz — Literary Creativity and “The Use of the Mind” in Early Medieval China
Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: Wendy Swartz, Rutgers University This lecture will examine accounts of wen (writing, literary creation) by two of China’s earliest and most innovative literary theorists: “Rhapsody on Writing” by Lu Ji and The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons by Liu Xie. Writing on creativity and implicitly advocating for human creation was an act