Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

Lin Chaochao - Rethinking the Making of the Chinese Working Class after 1949
2021-04-06 09:00 - 10:30 (America/New_York)
Speaker: Lin Chaochao, Department of History, Fudan University; HYI Visiting Scholar
Chair/discussant: Elizabeth Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute
The year 1949 marked a watershed in Chinese working-class history. With rapid industrialization, the policy inclination of the state brought great changes to all aspects of the working-class: their size and composition, job security, labor insurance, and the housing, medical care, education and cultural benefits they can enjoy. Because of the relationship of production and exploitation which is different from the classical class theory, the real existence of the working class under the planned system is often questioned. Researchers are more likely to regard it as the class shaped by politics than the class subject with independent consciousness. This talk is not only a reflection on the theoretical logic of class formation, but also a reflection on the real historical experience of the Chinese working class. Based on the discussion of several controversial issues, this study would like to find out the pattern and the path of the Chinese working-class formation after 1949.
More info: https://www.harvard-yenching.org/events/rethinking-the-making-of-the-chinese-working-class-after-1949/
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5sASphqhv6BkbvE

Li Zheng - Decarbonization Pathways of China's Power Sector
2021-04-07 10:00 - 11:00
Speaker: Li Zheng, Executive Vice President, Institute for Climate Change and Sustainable Development, Tsinghua University; Professor, Department of Energy and Power Engineering, Tsinghua University
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwsdeGopj4oHtFVDnYKTCpu9EiOozMH7rFi

Free Ekpar: Commemorating Five Years of the Unjust Detention of Ekpar Asat
2021-04-07 12:00 - 13:30
Speakers:
Sophie Richardson, Human Rights Watch
Thor Halvorssen, President, Human Rights Foundation
Irwin Cotler, Raoul Wallenberg Center
Gregory Niemeyer, University Of California, Berkeley
Chris Coons, US Senator, Delaware
Martha Minow, Former Dean, Harvard Law School
Join Rayhan Asat (Harvard Law School ‘16) in commemorating the fifth anniversary of her brother Ekpar’s imprisonment by the Chinese government. This event is co-sponsored by the Human Rights Foundation, the Raoul Wallenberg Center, the Jewish Movement for Uyghur Freedom, the Trebuchet, Harvard Law School Advocates for Human Rights, and Harvard Jewish Law Students Association.
More information: https://emr.fas.harvard.edu/event/free-ekpar-commemorating-five-years-unjust-detention
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdGlf6h3RSBLN-qfrZ1qC9ZUnzaCb84E0SriNHWRXDIjeP0kg/viewform

Critical Issues Confronting China Lecture Series featuring David Dollar - China’s Economy Faces Domestic and External Challenges
2021-04-07 12:30 - 13:45
Speaker: David Dollar, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Global Economy and Development, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution
China has gotten COVID-19 under control and is poised to bounce back strongly with 8% growth in 2021. But in the medium term it faces daunting domestic and external challenges. On the domestic side, demographic shifts will result in a declining labor force and put a premium on geographic mobility, especially rural-urban migration. Also, over-reliance on investment has led to an alarming rise in debt to GDP, risking a financial crisis. To grow well while managing these issues of labor and investment will require more innovation as a source of growth. On the external side, the trade war with the U.S. is not likely to be resolved quickly with the new Biden administration. China’s recent agreements with Asian partners and Europe, however, provide new opportunities that complement domestic reforms.
David Dollar is a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution and host of the Brookings trade podcast, Dollar&Sense. He is a leading expert on China’s economy and U.S.-China economic relations. From 2009 to 2013, Dollar was the U.S. Treasury’s economic and financial emissary to China, based in Beijing, facilitating the macroeconomic and financial policy dialogue between the United States and China. Prior to joining Treasury, Dollar worked 20 years for the World Bank, serving as country director for China and Mongolia, based in Beijing (2004-2009). His other World Bank assignments focused on Asian economies, including South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Bangladesh, and India. Dollar also worked in the World Bank’s research department. His publications focus on economic reform in China, globalization, and economic growth. He also taught economics at University of California Los Angeles, during which time he spent a semester in Beijing at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1986. He has a doctorate in economics from New York University and a bachelor’s in Chinese history and language from Dartmouth College.
Part of the Critical Issues Confronting China Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Sarah Laursen - The Invisible Outsider: Non-Chinese “Chinese” Art in the Harvard Art Museums
2021-04-07 13:15 - 15:00
Speaker: Sarah Laursen, Alan J. Dworsky Associate Curator of Chinese Art, Harvard Art Museum
The Harvard Art Museums’ database identifies over 6,600 objects in the collection as “Chinese.” But are they really? At least one third of China’s dynastic history—from its unification by the first emperor in 221 BCE until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912—took place under foreign rule. Even when an emperor could claim Han Chinese ancestry, his domain was frequently home to sizeable non-Chinese populations. This talk will explore the identities of so-called “Chinese” objects in the collection that might more rightly be associated with groups like the Xianbei. The logic behind the categories of “culture” and “place” in museum metadata will also be considered, along with possibilities for increasing the visibility of the ethnic minorities all too often erased from Chinese art history.
Register for Zoom meeting link

East Asian Digital Scholarship Series featuring Matthias Kaun - An Introduction to CrossAsia
2021-04-12 10:00 - 11:00
Speaker: Matthias Kaun, Director of the East Asia Department, Berlin State Library (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library) has been developing and running the platform CrossAsia (https://crossasia.org) for more than a decade. It was launched in 2005 to provide an easy to use and central point of access to the printed and electronic resources in the library’s collection relating to East, Central and Southeast Asia. The collection is partly funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Over the years, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin has continuously adjusted the objectives for CrossAsia, incorporating and in some cases anticipating the demands of academia and research – especially in the field of digital scholarship.
In this presentation, Matthias Kaun, director of the East Asia Department of the Berlin State Library, will focus on two points. First, he will introduce the cosmos of CrossAsia, including collection building, ILL services, digitization, and presentation, searching, contextualization of collections, full-text search (ITR), OA support, or (research) data services. He will do this from the perspective of a library and information infrastructure that is rethinking its mission to support Asia-related (digital) scholarship and research in an ever more globalized and digitally connected world. Matthias will show how CrossAsia seeks to organize access to collections – regardless of their physical form and/or usage limitations due to licensing restrictions – in ways that make the materials findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable wherever possible.
Secondly, Matthias Kaun will explore the aspect of responsibility that goes hand in hand with the further development and operation of CrossAsia in the context of a networked and more internationally-oriented research.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: http://bit.ly/EADS-XASIA

Fairbank Center Director's Seminar Featuring Tyler Jost: Institutional Origins of Miscalculation in Chinese Foreign Policy
2021-04-13 12:30 - 13:30
Speaker: Tyler Jost, Assistant Professor of Political Science, International & Public Affairs and Watson Institute Assistant Professor of China Studies, Brown University
Moderator: Elizabeth J. Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University
Tyler Jost’s research focuses on international security and Chinese foreign policy, with a particular interest in the design of institutions responsible for national security decision-making. Jost’s book project offers a theory of the origins and consequences of national security institutions, coupling an original cross-national time series dataset with new archival and interview data from China, Taiwan, India and Pakistan. Other research projects employ qualitative, statistical and experimental methods to address theoretical puzzles regarding the politics of elite advisers, bureaucracies, and international security across a variety of regional contexts.
Jost received a PhD in political science from Harvard University and held postdoctoral fellowships at the Belfer Center International Security Program and Harvard-Columbia China and the World Program. Jost’s research has been supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Institute for Strategic and Conflict Studies at George Washington University, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science.
Previously, Jost served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, with assignments to Afghanistan, U.S. Cyber Command, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Presented via Zoom Webinar
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FAEbiMb-TB6q03oeH1bX3Q

China Humanities Seminar featuring Wu Hung - Unearthing Wu Daozi (c. 686 – c. 760)
2021-04-13 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Wu Hung, University of Chicago
Worshipped by later folk artists as the God of Painting, Wu Daozi (c. 686 – c. 760) was also praised by Tang art historian Zhang Yanyuan as someone who “did not look back and will have no successors.” But alas this Sage of Painting (Hua Sheng) left no work to us (imagine if we could only read about Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo, or know Du Fu and Li Bo only by reputation). Can archaeology remedy this unfortunate situation as it has done for so many other fields from classical philosophy to ancient science? This talk suggests that a set of newly discovered imperial tomb murals (so new that they are still being conserved in a museum lab) may allow us to approach Wu’s style more closely than ever before, and also leads us to problematize the concept of authorship in Tang painting.
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYrf–opjsqEtMtPaFa8anuUbAYGJ7Vm_vv

Modern China Lecture Series featuring Taomo Zhou - Leveraging Liminality: Shenzhen and the Origins of China’s Reform and Opening
2021-04-13 20:00 - 21:30
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 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.
Taomo 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.
Part of the Modern China Lecture Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Critical Issues Confronting China Lecture Series featuring Eswar Prasad - China’s Role in Global Finance
2021-04-14 12:30 - 13:45
Read the transcript of the event here.
Speaker: Eswar Prasad, Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy, Cornell University; Senior Fellow and New Century Chair in International Economics, Brookings Institution; Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research.
This lecture will discuss China’s economic prospects, policies, and reforms, and their implications for its role in international finance. The lecture will cover China’s economy, financial markets, and the renminbi, and also touch upon the country’s new digital currency.
Part of the Critical Issues Confronting China Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Harvard-Yenching Library Bibliographic Orientation Session
2021-04-15 11:00 - 12:00
The Harvard-Yenching Library is offering virtual bibliographic orientation sessions via Zoom to introduce you to the most important Chinese language resources.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUvc–oqzIqGdxB4YY7w9_4_JRVcTfeHNBh

Gods of Leather and Lilies: Ancestral Spirits and Community Leadership Culture in the Buddhist Debates at Kōyasan
2021-04-19 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker: Elizabeth Tinsley, University of California, Irvine
Since the early fifteenth century, the monastic participants in the Risseigi debates at the Kōyasan esoteric Buddhist community have been promoted to membership in the “Myōjin-kō” confraternity. Although debate protocol was based on that of Kōfukuji’s, the process by which the debating priests were qualified for the confraternity is modeled on practices of rotating leadership in the local communities outside the Buddhist complex. These involved the excursions of various “non-Buddhist” gods and the investiture of their temporary custodians with a program of worship. I will introduce this organizational model and its variants before focusing on the objects of worship, their material supports, and their meanings.
Understanding the practice of rotating leadership sheds light on the initially confusing selection of gods. Most important among these at Kōyasan’s debates was “Ryūgi Myōjin” whose roots can be found in the spirits of a willow swamp and a lily-field, and who is related to a mysterious god of leather-making. Important texts for understanding these practices, the debates, and these gods are the Gohonjiku ritual manual, the Gohonjiku painting, Sanja takusen paintings, the Myōjin-kō liturgy, and the “origin tale” of the leather-making god. The incorporation of the gods (who previously/also occupied other spheres of worship) into Buddhist debates is to do with community identity reinforcement but is indicative of co-existence rather than of subjugation or appropriation. This talk’s study of the “patterns and players” in the debates shows that the medieval mountain was considered, fundamentally, a site of gods – and ancestral spirits – despite the Buddhist community settled there.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEtd–gqjIsHtfvicCbZb99ToOr_cndAKGP

China Economy Lecture Series featuring Angela Zhang — Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism: How the Rise of China Challenges Global Regulation
2021-04-19 20:00 - 21:30
Speaker: Angela Zhang, Director of the Center for Chinese Law and Associate Professor, The University of Hong Kong
In this webinar, Angela Zhang will discuss her new book Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism: How the Rise of China Challenges Global Regulation (Oxford University Press). This book examines the unique ways in which China regulates and is regulated by foreign countries, revealing a ‘Chinese exceptionalism’ that is reshaping global antitrust regulation. Angela will provide a deep dive into Chinese bureaucratic politics while analyzing the power imbalances between businesses and the government in China. In addition to examining the challenges foreign multinationals have faced in complying with Chinese antitrust law, she will also explore the difficulties Chinese firms have encountered as U.S. and E.U. antitrust regulators tighten their scrutiny over Chinese businesses. Angela will conclude with her book’s implications for future Sino-American relations, as well as the recent events surrounding Ant Group’s IPO debacle and the Chinese regulation of big tech.
Angela Zhang is an associate professor of law and the director of the Centre for Chinese Law at the University of Hong Kong. An award-winning legal scholar, Angela is a highly sought-after commentator on Chinese antitrust issues. Before joining the University of Hong Kong, Angela taught at King’s College London and practiced law for six years in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Angela received her LLB from Peking University, and her LLM, JD and JSD from the University of Chicago Law School. She wrote her doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Judge Richard A. Posner. To learn more about Angela, please visit angelazhang.net.
Part of the China Economy Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Transcript: Download Transcript

Fairbank Center Director's Seminar featuring Martin K. Whyte - China's Hukou System: How an Engine of Development Has Now Become a Major Obstacle
2021-04-20 12:30 - 13:45
Read the transcript of the event here.
Speaker: Martin K. Whyte, John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and Sociology, Emeritus, and former director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University
As the People’s Republic of China has pursued economic development over the decades, a central dilemma concerns how to treat its massive rural population, and the extent to which its rural-origin citizens can contribute to, and benefit from, economic growth. In different time periods, there have been dramatic changes in the nature of rural-urban relations, often with paradoxical consequences for prospects for economic growth. The talk will examine the nature of rural-urban relations in different time periods, with a focus on post-1978 changes. The initial reforms, by freeing peasants from the “socialist serfdom” of the communes and allowing geographic mobility while maintaining the hukou system and systematic discrimination against those of rural origin, produced the primary engine of China’s post-1978 economic boom. However, by maintaining pernicious discrimination based upon hukou status, particularly regarding the educational opportunities of rural youths, China now faces a major human capital deficit that it is struggling to overcome. The talk concludes with a discussion of why it has been so hard to reform and eliminate hukou-based discrimination, and what more needs to be done for China to escape the “middle income trap” and continue its economic rise.
Part of the Fairbank Center Director’s Seminar Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Jessica Chen Weiss - A World Safe for Autocracy: The Domestic Politics of China’s Foreign Policy
2021-04-21 12:30 - 13:45
Speaker: Jessica Chen Weiss, Associate Professor of Government, Cornell University
How does China’s domestic governance shape its foreign policy? What role do nationalism and ideology play in Beijing’s regional and global ambitions? The Chinese leadership has been at once a revisionist, defender, reformer, and free-rider in the international system—insisting rigidly on issues that are central to its domestic survival, while showing flexibility on issues that are more peripheral. To illuminate this variation and prospects for conflict and cooperation, Weiss will discuss her new book project, which theorizes and illustrates the domestic-international linkages in Beijing’s approach to issues ranging from sovereignty and homeland disputes to climate change and COVID-19.
Jessica Chen Weiss is Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University. She is the author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (Oxford University Press, 2014). The dissertation on which it is based won the 2009 American Political Science Association Award for best dissertation in international relations, law and politics.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in International Organization, China Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Security Studies. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Cornell Einaudi Center, Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Uppsala University, Princeton-Harvard China & The World Program, Bradley Foundation, Fulbright-Hays program, and University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.
Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Weiss received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. Before joining Cornell, she was an assistant professor at Yale University (2009-2015) and founded FACES, the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford, while an undergraduate at Stanford University. Learn more about her research and writing at www.jessicachenweiss.com.
Part of the Critical Issues Confronting China Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Transcript: Download Transcript

Genocide in the 21st Century: The Uyghur Crisis
2021-04-22 08:00 - 2021-04-23 07:59, 2021-04-27 08:00 - 2021-04-28 07:59
Join the Harvard Human Rights Working Group and the Human Rights Foundation for a 2-day conference spotlighting engaging experts on the Uyghur crisis, to gain a holistic and multi-dimensional understanding of the genocide in this region. Panels will explore topics of authoritarianism, digital repression, complicity in the fashion industry, and the separation of Uyghur families. Guillermo Hava ‘23 will moderate the closing panel “Silence is Not an Option,” where participants will gain concrete tactics for standing up against these atrocities.
Panels will take place on Thursday, April 22, and Tuesday, April 27th. To learn more about our panels and speakers and to register, please use this link: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/Uyghur-rights/register

Special Event featuring Xiaotong Feng - Rural Revitalization: China’s “Ace” in Dealing with Western “Competition”
2021-04-22 12:30 - 13:45
Reading the transcript of the event here.
Speaker: Xiaotong Feng, Ph.D. Candidate, Communication University of China; Fairbank Center Visiting Scholar
Discussant/Moderator: Michael Szonyi, Frank Wen-Hsiung Wu Memorial Professor of Chinese History; Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University
In the past few years, even the most optimistic scholars will not deny that China’s relations with Western countries have encountered big difficulties. Whether China accepts this willingly or not, the external conditions needed to maintain China’s past economic growth model are now absent. The “Rural Revitalization” strategy promoted by Xi Jinping is generally regarded as an internal social governance issue, aimed at promoting social equity, balancing urban-rural differences and protecting the natural environment. However, can “Rural Revitalization” also be seen as a strategy to help China cope with “competition” from Western countries? Can it reduce China’s dependence on the US dollar? Does it represent a new and unprecedented development model?
Presented via Zoom Webinar

China Social and Economic Symposium: The Evolving Role of US and China in the Global Economy
2021-04-22 20:00 - 21:00
Panelists:
Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard University; Former Secretary of the Treasury; Former Director of the National Economic Council
Kevin Rudd, 26th Prime Minister of Australia; President and CEO of Asia Society; President of Asia Society Policy Institute; Chairman of International Peace Institute
Jin Liqun, President and Chair of the Board of Directors of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
Moderator: Ping Wang, MPA 2021, Harvard Kennedy School
This symposium is organized by China Society, a student organization at the Harvard Kennedy School.
More information about other symposium panels may be found at: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/events/china-social-and-economic-symposium.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_EzsNSNLbS7SHvl9g8aqvTw

Sci-fi China: Avatars, Aliens, Anthropos 科幻中國：异形，异次元，异托邦
2021-04-22 20:00 - 22:00
Panelists:
Dingru Huang, Harvard University
Jannis Chen, Harvard University
Dihao Zhou, Yale University
Michael O’Krent, Harvard University
Emily Xueni Jin, Yale University
Please join us for a workshop on Chinese science fiction with writers Han Song, Egoyan Zheng, Regina Kanyu Wang, and Chen Qiufan. Five young scholars will present their latest research. The event is co-hosted by David Der-wei Wang and Mingwei Song.
The event is co-sponsored by Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, CCK Foundation, and the East Asian Studies Program at Wellesley College.
This is a bilingual event conducted in English and Mandarin.
Presented via Zoom Webinar
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_baKySmDQREyw7M1K9Ne77Q

Gender Studies Workshop - Acting the Part: Gender and Performance Onstage
2021-04-23 09:00 - 17:30
Presented via Zoom WebinarRegistration RequiredRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LZDsfUQ1Rwm2YW8IYxGS-A
Gender as a form of performance is nowhere more clearly articulated than on the theater stage (and in opera-based films). On stage, the male and female characters are enacted by artistic mimesis based on a set of assumptions about what constitutes maleness and the femaleness. Theater is also a great unifying force in standardizing these notions and it offers stage characters larger than life-size power to influence the audience. In turn, gender is not only a form of social performance, but through theater, the artistic form embodying the normative ideals of gender roles become formalized. This is true both in terms of acting technique and the social values contained within the system of gestures. This is especially evident in the role of the female or male impersonators in opera performances in whose art the ideal form is essentialized. However, gender ideals and stereotypes vary with time and place. At the same time, these “essences” also change over time, and theater is the ideal platform to challenge the inherited conventions, while often reaffirming their underlying values. True to the spirit of theater, its license of playfulness also gives it a subversive potential. The issue of gender performance is likewise tightly linked to identity. The performance of gender roles on the theater stage of Chinese diaspora communities, for example, also engages with the issue of gender in the context of race and Asian identity.
This workshop explores the issues of performing gender identity on stage. Topics may include: gender impersonation – fanchuan 反串; actor training in genderized roles; subversion of gender norms on stage; gender performance, identity and ideology in times of national upheaval, migration and social change.
Participants:Hsu Pei Hung 許培鴻, documentarian/cinematographerEileen Cheng-yin Chow, Duke UniversityXing Fan, University of TorontoXu, Peng, University of Hawai’iTed Hui, Harvard UniversityMatthew Sommer, Stanford UniversityCatherine Yeh, Boston UniversityEmily Wilcox, William & Mary
Commentators:Wai-Yee Li, Professor Chinese Literature, Harvard UniversityEllen Widmer, Mayling Soong Professor of Chinese Studies, Professor of East Asian Studies, Wellesley CollegeThomas P. Kelly, Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
AGENDA (All Times EDT)
UPDATED AND FINAL SCHEDULE
Friday April 23 [all times listed are EDT]
PANEL 19:00-9:10 AMWelcoming address by Eileen Cheng-yin Chow (Duke University) and Catherine Yeh (Boston University)
9:10-9:50AM Documenting Peony: a conversation and visual presentation with
photographer/ filmmaker Hsu Pei Hung 許培鴻 and Eileen Cheng-yin Chow
[10-minute break]
PANEL 2
10:00-10:15AM Xing Fan (University of Toronto): “Beyond Filling Female Blanks: In Search of Theoretical Frameworks for Gender Representation in Asian Theatre Historiography”
10:15-10:30AM Discussant Tom Kelly (Harvard University)
10:30-10:45AM Discussion on source materials and paper
[15-minute break]
11:00-11:15AM Peng Xu (University of Hawai’i): “Little Kitten Opera”: The Female Performance of Masculinity on the Public Stage in Shanghai, 1890s–1910s
11:15-11:30AM Discussant Tom Kelly (Harvard University)
11:30-11:45AM Discussion on source materials and paper
[1-hour lunch break – we will reconvene at 12:45PM]
PANEL 3
12:45-1:00PM Ming Tak Ted Hui (University of Oxford): “The Political Implications of Crossdressing Before the Fall of the Ming”
1:00-1:15PM Discussant Ellen Widmer (Wellesley College)
1:15-1:30 Discussion on source materials and paper
[15-minute break]
1:45-2:00PM Matthew Sommer (Stanford University): “The Persecution of M-F Crossing in Qing Dynasty China” (Stanford University)
2:00-2:15PM Discussant Ellen Widmer (Wellesley College)
2:15-2:30PM Discussion on source materials and paper
[mid-afternoon 30-minute coffee break – we will reconvene at 3pm]
PANEL 4
3:00-3:15PM Catherine Yeh (Boston University): Unveiling the Orchid Hand: Mei Lanfang’s Art of Female Impersonator and the Redefinition of Gender in Peking Opera
3:15-3:30PM Discussant Wai-Yee Li (Harvard University)
3:30-3:45PM Discussion on source materials and paper
[15-minute break]
4pm-4:15PM Emily Wilcox (William & Mary): “Ethnic Presence and Ethnic Absence: Qemberxanim’s Bodily Discourse and the Making of Female ‘Uyghur Dance’ in China”
4:15Pm-4:30PM Discussant Wai-Yee Li (Harvard University)
4:30pm-4:45PM Discussion on source materials and paper
4:45-5:30PM General discussion and concluding remarks

Kazunori Mizushima and Mahan Moalemi: Futurisms and East Asian Media Ecologies
2021-04-23 11:00 - 12:00
Speakers:
Kazunori Mizushima, Professor of Cultural Studies, Osaka Sangyo University, Japan
Mahan Moalemi, PhD Candidate in Film and Visual Studies, Harvard University.
Kazunori Mizushima’s presentation, From Neo-Tokyo to Neo-China and Beyond: For the Navigation of Futures in East Asian Media Ecologies, discusses (1) the linkage between Tokyo 2020, AKIRA, and Neo-Tokyo, (2) the transition of the future from Neo-Tokyo to Neo-China, (3) the intricate relationship between right/left accelerationism and sinofuturism, and (4) the relationship between AI-capital and post-capitalist inhumanism. It would be great if this could contribute even a little to the “politics of navigation” (Mahan Moalemi), which will open the futures in East Asian Media Ecologies toward “chronocommons.”
Mahan Moalemi’s presentation, Ethnofuturisms, will look into the critical potentials of “ethnofuturism in the plural form” as a comparative framework for approaching a range of theoretical and artistic endeavors, including sinofuturism, among others, that negotiate the dilemmas of situated historicity after the alleged end(s) of history.
Presented via Zoom: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/96523725983?pwd=[REDACTED]

Fairbank Center Annual Neuhauser Lecture featuring Wang Jisi - China and America: Is Peaceful Competition Possible?
2021-04-27 20:00 - 21:30
Read the transcript of the event here.
Speaker: Wang Jisi, Professor in the School of International Studies and president of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University
Wang Jisi is a professor in the School of International Studies and president of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies(IISS), Peking University(PKU). He is honorary president of the Chinese Association for American Studies, and was a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of China’s Foreign Ministry in 2008-2016.
After working as a laborer in the Chinese countryside in 1968-78, Wang Jisi entered Peking University and obtained an MA degree there in 1983. He taught in Peking University’s Department of International Politics (1983-91), and then served as director of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences until 2005. From 2005 to 2013, Wang Jisi served as dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University. He was concurrently director of the Institute of International Strategic Studies of the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China from 2001 to 2009.
Wang Jisi was a visiting fellow or visiting professor at Oxford University (1982-83), University of California at Berkeley (1984-85), University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (1990-91), and Claremont McKenna College in California (2001). He was invited as a Global Scholar by Princeton University in 2011-15 and spent 9 months in total there with the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He has served as an adviser to a number of international institutions and journals, including the Asia Society Policy Institute, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo, the journal The American Interest, and the journal Global Asia.
Professor Wang’s scholarly interests cover U.S. foreign policy, China’s foreign relations, Asian security, and global politics in general. He has published numerous works in these fields.
The Fairbank Center Annual Neuhauser Lecture
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Border Conflicts in the Himalayas: Bhutan, Nepal, India, and China
2021-04-28 09:00 - 11:00
Panelists:
Sudha Ramachandran, Independent Journalist; Adjunct Faculty, Asian College of Journalism, Chennai
Bhaskar Koirala, Director, Nepal Institute of Strategic and International Studies
Frank O’Donnell, Postdoctoral Scholar in the Rising Power Alliances Project, Fletcher School, Tufts University; Nonresident Fellow in the South Asia Program at the Stimson Center
Xiaoyu Pu, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada, Reno; Public Intellectuals Program Fellow, National Committee on United States-China Relations; Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Inter-American Dialogue, Washington, D.C.
Moderator: Arunabh Ghosh, Associate Professor of History, Harvard University
Asia Beyond the Headlines Seminar Series
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://tinyurl.com/up3zjcvw.

Teng Fei - Re-estimating the Stranded Assets of the Coal Power Sector in China: Is It Too Big To Fail?
2021-04-28 10:00 - 11:00
Speaker: Teng Fei, Associate Professor in the Institute of Energy, Environment, and Economy at Tsinghua University; Deputy Director of the Berkeley-Tsinghua Joint Research Center on Energy and Climate Change
Teng Fei’s research interests include climate policy, international climate regimes, consumer behavior in energy consumption, and energy modeling. He is also a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report, Working Group III. He is lead author on the Second and Third China National Assessment Report on Climate Change, and a member of the drafting team for several key national documents, including the National Plan on Climate Change and the White Paper on Climate Change. He served as an advisory expert for China’s negotiation team under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change for many years. He is also member of BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) expert group in BASIC ministerial meetings since 2011.
Teng received his bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from Tsinghua University in 1998, and his MSc and Ph.D in Management Science in the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University in 2003. Teng finished his postdoctoral research in France in 2004.
Sponsored by the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy, and Environment, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEldequpzMiHtCGjqDYPO-HeZd3gtQ-GVpI

Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Luke Patey — How China Loses: The Pushback Against Chinese Global Ambitions
2021-04-28 12:30 - 13:45
Speaker: Luke Patey, Senior Researcher, Danish Institute for International Studies
At a time when many are fixated on US-China strategic competition, how will China’s relations with the rest of the world shape its future power? From its Belt and Road Initiative linking Asia and Europe, to its “Made in China 2025” strategy to dominate high-tech industries, to its significant economic reach into Africa and Latin America, China appears primed to become the world’s dominant superpower. But China also faces considerable new risks and challenges. Drawing on studies of selected countries in East Africa, Latin America, Europe, and East Asia, Luke Patey will discuss how many countries are recognizing that relations with China can undermine their independence and competitiveness and are working together to recalibrate their engagement
Dr. Luke Patey is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and Lead Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, University of Oxford. He is author of the new book, How China Loses: The Pushback Against China’s Global Ambitions (Oxford University Press, 2021). His work focuses on the intersection of China’s trade, investment, and finance with its foreign and security policy. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Hindu, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. He holds a doctorate and MSc from the Copenhagen Business School and a bachelor degree from Queen’s University. Patey’s last book was The New Kings of Crude: China, India, and the Global Struggle for Oil in Sudan and South Sudan (Hurst, 2014).
Part of the Critical Issues Confronting China Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

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Lu Mai - The Chinese Dream and Ordinary Chinese People
2021-04-29 09:30 - 11:00
Speaker: Lu Mai, Vice-Chairman, China Development Research Foundation (CDRF)
Discussants:
Jason Furman, Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Winnie Yip, Professor of the Practice of Global Health Policy, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Acting Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Moderator: Anthony Saich, Director, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
Lu Mai’s book The Chinese Dream and Ordinary Chinese People explores the lives of 40 ordinary people in an effort to answer a key question: What is the “China Dream”? The book tracks the journeys of individuals selected from each generation since the 1930’s and identifies three driving forces motivating their lives and dreams: autonomy, self-awareness, and hard work, along with family and social support as further important factors. These stories also reveal the ways in which significant national changes created differences in the interviewees’ dreams and experiences in pursuing them. The book chronicles how the future of an individuals is closely linked to the future of the country, and how a bright future for the country can mean a good life for all. The study outlines the ways in which people’s longing for a better life is the basis and a central element of the Chinese Dream.
Lu Mai is Vice-Chairman of the State Council’s China Development Research Foundation (CDRF), and previously served as General Secretary for over two decades. Mr. Lu has extensive experience working on rural reform efforts in China, having served as Director of Experimental Area Office for Rural Reform, Research Center for Rural Development of the State Council in the late 1980’s and leading a number of related research projects for the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Mr. Lu earned his B.A. in economics from Beijing College of Economics in 1982, and his M.A. in public administration from John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1991.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://ash.harvard.edu/event/book-talk-chinese-dream-and-ordinary-chinese-people

East Asian Digital Scholarship Community Hour
2021-04-30 11:00 - 12:00
Summer is coming, but field research in East Asia still seems to be quite impossible. How to spend the summer doing research efficiently? How do you utilize the databases in your fields? Do you have use cases or approaches to share? Please join the East Asian Digital Scholarship Community Hour to share your experience and methods in using databases. If you want to share your use cases, please fill in this Google Form (https://forms.gle/WRLFjoSnsyU1Yq2p6) by 26 April 2021. The community hour will be recorded and posted on the Fairbank Center YouTube Channel.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://bit.ly/202104_EADSCH

From the May Fourth to Baodiao: Defend the Diaoyu Islands Movement 1971-2021 海上風雷：五四論保釣，1971-2021
2021-05-03 21:00 - 23:00
This forum will be conducted in Mandarin
In 1971, overseas Chinese students across the United States launched the Baodiao movement in response to the territorial disputes over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands between Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, and the United States. The movement ignited massive demonstrations and debates on issues from sovereignty to territoriality, and form patriotism to global leftism, such that it was compared to the May Fourth Movement. Fifty years after the movement, veteran participants, scholars, and students will discuss its significance and impacts on contemporary cultural politics.
Speakers:
劉大任 Liu Ta-jen
張系國 Chang Hsi-kuo
邵玉銘 Shaw Yu-ming
黃子平 Huang Ziping
蕭阿勤 Hsiao Ah-Chin, Academia Sinica
王智明 Wang Chih-ming, Academia Sinica
Respondents:
陳芳代 Chen Fangdai, Harvard University
鍾秩維 Chung Chih-wei, National Taiwan University
李浴洋 Li Yuyang, Beijing Normal University
涂航 Tu Hang, Harvard University
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8iJrUrbVQoaxAYJovBoO0w

Thomas Mullaney - The Search for Mod China: How Chinese Computing Hacked Modernity
2021-05-04 12:00 - 13:15
Speaker: Thomas Mullaney, Professor of History, Stanford University
During the global rise of consumer PCs in the 1980s, no Western-manufactured computer, printer, monitor, operating system, or software could handle Chinese character input or output. Not “out of the box,” at least. The “Sinicization” of personal computing depended upon a messy, decentralized, and often brilliant series of Chinese hacks and modifications—or “mods,” as the term is often abbreviated within computing circles. Western-built dot-matrix printers were modded. Western-designed disc operating systems were modded. Digital Chinese fonts were custom-designed, pixel by pixel. Basic Input-Output Software (BIOS) was modded. Element by element, engineers in China and elsewhere rendered Western-manufactured computing hardware and software compatible with Chinese. In this talk, Stanford historian Thomas S. Mullaney draws from his forthcoming book The Chinese Computer: A History (MIT Press) to examine an unwritten chapter in the global history of computing—one too often dismissed as “copycatting,” “mimicry,” “piracy,” and “theft.”
Supported by the Asia Center and convened by Professor, Victor Seow, Department of the History of Science.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://tinyurl.com/ycp2nkk8
