Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

Special Event - The State of Taiwan Studies: A Roundtable Discussion on Methods and Directions
2021-06-28 09:30 - 11:00 (America/New_York) | MA
Read the transcript of the event here.
PanelistsJaw-Nian Huang, Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Development Studies, National Chengchi University, TaiwanLawrence Zi-Qiao Yang, Assistant Professor, Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, TaiwanKevin Wei Luo, Doctoral Fellow, Hou Family fellow in Taiwan Studies, Harvard UniversityLev Nachman, PhD in political science, UC Irvine
DiscussantChing-fang Hsu, Postdoctoral Fellow, Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan
This roundtable discussion brings together past and present Hou Family Doctoral Fellows in Taiwan Studies at the Fairbank Center, to discuss current methodological approaches and emerging thematic directions in the study of Taiwanese history, society, and politics. Bridging across disciplinary fields such as media studies, history, and political science, the panelists will share their research experiences amid resurging interest in Taiwan, and envision how this renewed conversation can help jumpstart the next generation of Taiwan studies.
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Transcript: Download Transcript

Pivoting to a New Research Topic
2021-06-28 19:30 - 21:30 | MA
Speakers:
Michael Collins, Yenching Academy (currently Council on Foreign Relations)
Bill Figueroa, University of Pennsylvania
Yi Ci Lo, UC Irvine
Tullia Fraser, Durham University (currently University of Hong Kong)

Emily Baum (University of California, Irvine) and Denise Y. Ho (Yale University) present the second annual webinar series, Doing Chinese History (in a New Era). Designed for—but not exclusive to—graduate students and junior scholars in Chinese history and Chinese studies, these webinars aim to address persistent challenges in research and professional development.
Webinar 1, “Pivoting to a New Research Topic,” features four speakers who are completing or have recently completed a thesis or dissertation, and who have had to adapt their topics because of changing research conditions. Facing restrictions on research travel and archival access, each of the speakers have modified their research agenda and made use of local and digital sources. This webinar addresses the challenge of the “research pivot,” offering advice and experience from current and recent graduate students.

Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://yale.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_COakdrS_Q8yIeroOQWB29Q(link is external)

This series is sponsored by the Long US-China Institute (University of California, Irvine) and the Council on East Asian Studies (Yale University), with support from:

Hoover Institution, Project on China’s Global Sharp Power, Stanford University
Centre for Asian Research, York University
Department of History, Simon Fraser University
East Asian Studies Program, Johns Hopkins University
Institute of Asian Research, UBC
Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University
Fairbank Center, Harvard University
East Asian Studies Program, UC Santa Cruz
Global China Center, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong

Aging in China: Labor Participation, Retirement, Pension and Long-term Care Insurance
2021-07-08 08:00 - 10:00 | MA
China’s population is ageing rapidly at a rate that surpasses most of its Asian neighbors and advanced economies in the West. In 2015, 10.5% of the population was aged 65+, and this number is projected to grow to 26.1% by 2050. Evidencing increases in life expectancy, the growth of the 80+ population from 22 million (or 1.5%) in 2015 to an expected 115 million (or 8.2%) by 2050 is particularly consequential. The challenges presented by the ageing of China’s population are vast and complex. This session examines the effect of ageing on economic growth, labor market decisions and the opportunities and challenges in financing elder care to meet the needs of the ageing population.
This session brings together leading experts to share their research on these important issues. The session will start with a brief introduction by Winnie Yip, followed by four presentations and commentaries and moderated discussions with discussants. There will be plenty of time for exchanges and interactions with the online audience as well.
For more information, visit https://www.healtheconomics.org/page/PreCongressSessionJuly8-12pm-2pmGMT.

Archives, Libraries, and Databases in Taiwan
2021-07-19 19:30 - 21:30 | MA
Speakers:
Feng-yuan Hsu, National Archives Administration
Shiuon Chu, Academia Sinica, Institute of Modern History
Hsi-yuan Chen, Academia Sinica, Institute of History and Philology and Academia Sinica Center for Digital Cultures
Hsiao Ya-Hung, Academia Sinica, Institute of Modern History Archives
Moderator:
David Cheng Chang, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Emily Baum (University of California, Irvine) and Denise Y. Ho (Yale University) present the second annual webinar series, Doing Chinese History (in a New Era). Designed for—but not exclusive to—graduate students and junior scholars in Chinese history and Chinese studies, these webinars aim to address persistent challenges in research and professional development.
Webinar 2 builds on the popularity of last year’s webinars—especially one on digital sources(link is external) and one on archives outside of China(link is external)—to focus on research in Taiwan. This year we feature four scholars who are professional archivists as well as historians and invite them to introduce archival, digital, and library resources in Taiwan. Featured collections include those of Academia Sinica and the National Archives Administration.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://yale.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_MrnuGNTpRtqNqTEeSYpMoQ(link is external)
This series is sponsored by the Long US-China Institute (University of California, Irvine) and the Council on East Asian Studies (Yale University), with support from:

Hoover Institution, Project on China’s Global Sharp Power, Stanford University
Centre for Asian Research, York University
Department of History, Simon Fraser University
East Asian Studies Program, Johns Hopkins University
Institute of Asian Research, UBC
Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University
Fairbank Center, Harvard University
East Asian Studies Program, UC Santa Cruz
Global China Center, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong

Historical Network Research in Chinese Studies
2021-07-23 08:00 - 2021-07-25 07:59, 2021-07-30 08:00 - 2021-08-01 07:59 | MA
Friday July 23 – Satuday, July 24, 2021 | 9:00 – 11:30 AM EDT
Friday July 30 – Satuday, July 31, 2021 | 9:00 – 11:30 AM EDT
For more information, including an agenda and speaker list, please visit: https://fccsdigitalchina.github.io/hnrcs2021/
Network analysis is a burgeoning field in East Asian digital humanities. In recent years, the digitization of source materials, the proliferation of databases, as well as the development of digital tools, have greatly facilitated the study of networks in Chinese studies. To promote interdisciplinary dialogue between network scholars specializing in different periods of China and beyond, Henrike Rudolph and CHEN Song, edited a special issue for the Journal of Historical Network Research. Based on stellar contributions to the special issue, this conference showcases recent scholarship that applies the methodology and technology of network analysis to the study of diverse topics in Chinese history.
The conference features a mix of multi-paper panels, project presentations, and hands-on workshops. Multi-paper panels feature scholarship empowered by network analysis and stimulate further discussion on the methodology and its application to the study of Chinese history; project presentations give brief introductions to databases and web platforms for network analysis and visualization; and workshops are interactive and focus on technical know-hows and encourage more scholars to dip their toes in this field. We aim to strike a balance between workshops for beginners and those for scholars who have already had some experience with the network analysis approach. The conference will be held on Zoom and on the mornings of July 23, 24, 30, and 31. To reach out to as wide an audience as possible, the conference will be hosted by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. We will hold the conference from 9am to 11:30am EDT, so that people from the US West Coast, Europe and East Asia can all participate.
Registration is free but will allow for better planning. We use one Zoom link for all sessions on each conference day. Therefore, attendees must register separately for each day of conference, but they do not need to register separately for each individual session. We will send out pertinent materials (e.g., paper abstracts, handouts, links to data and software) prior to each day of conference. To receive these materials, attendees must register no later than 11:59 p.m. EDT on July 21 (for July 23 and 24 sessions) and July 28 (for July 30 and 31 sessions).
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://fccsdigitalchina.github.io/hnrcs2021/#/registration

Nancy Steinhardt - Convergence and Entanglement: Reconsidering the Mongol Architectural Narrative
2021-07-23 21:00 - 23:00 | MA
Speaker: Nancy Steinhardt, Professor of East Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art, University of Pennsylvania
Among approximately four hundred buildings that survive in China from the period of Mongolian rule, 1271-1368, about one percent have features that sharply distinguish them from the rest: a pagoda, a minaret, an observatory, a mausoleum, and rock-carved architecture are examples. The pagoda, minaret, and observatory are put forth in any study that seeks to prove the infiltration of foreign architecture into China during the Mongol century.
We are pleased to invite Professor Nancy Steinhardt, Professor of East Asian Art at UPenn and Curator of Chinese Art at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, to present part of her work on the narrative of Chinese architecture during Mongolian rule.
This lecture, “Convergence and Entanglement: Reconsidering the Mongol Architectural Narrative” re-examines these buildings and their relation in the scope of Chinese architecture. The five buildings featured in this talk calls for a reconsideration of the impact of Mongolian rule on Chinese architecture, guided by the themes of convergence and entanglement. The lecture comes as part of CAMLab Embodied Architecture project, endeavoring to highlight the work of Chinese architects.
Nancy Steinhardt is Professor of East Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art at the University of Pennsylvania where she has taught since 1982. She received her PhD at Harvard in 1981 and was a Junior Fellow at Harvard from 1978-81. Steinhardt taught at Bryn Mawr from 1981-1982. She has broad research interests in the art and architecture of China and China’s border regions, particularly problems that result from the interaction between Chinese art and that of peoples to the North, Northeast, and Northwest.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ORWTbEjCRr6ByTiAXdGwDg

Academic Jobs Outside of the United States
2021-08-12 20:00 - 22:00 | MA
Speakers:
Rowena He, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Taomo Zhou, Nanyang Technological University
Mary Brazelton, Cambridge University
Charles Chang, Duke Kunshan
Emily Baum (University of California, Irvine) and Denise Y. Ho (Yale University) present the second annual webinar series, Doing Chinese History (in a New Era). Designed for—but not exclusive to—graduate students and junior scholars in Chinese history and Chinese studies, these webinars aim to address persistent challenges in research and professional development.
Webinar 3 turns to the question of professional development and careers outside of American academia. The academic job market remains highly competitive, and in recent years newly-minted PhDs have sought jobs around the world, including in Europe and Asia. However, students trained in the United States may be less familiar with both the international job search and the culture of universities abroad. This webinar brings together four professors who have recently taken jobs in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UK. They will discuss the application process, academic life at their university, and the challenges and opportunities of a different academic system.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://yale.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_f9iQ0uFQSrS9hAURtrpslg(link is external)

This series is sponsored by the Long US-China Institute (University of California, Irvine) and the Council on East Asian Studies (Yale University), with support from:

Hoover Institution, Project on China’s Global Sharp Power, Stanford University
Centre for Asian Research, York University
Department of History, Simon Fraser University
East Asian Studies Program, Johns Hopkins University
Institute of Asian Research, UBC
Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University
Fairbank Center, Harvard University
East Asian Studies Program, UC Santa Cruz
Global China Center, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong

Modern China Lecture Series featuring Jeremy Brown and Louisa Lim - Reassessing June Fourth: New Approaches and Sources on the Tiananmen Protests and Beijing Massacre
2021-09-14 20:00 - 21:30 | MA
Speakers:Jeremy Brown, Professor, Department of History, Simon Fraser UniversityLouisa Lim, Journalist and Lecturer, University of Melbourne
Part of the Modern China lecture series

How significant were the events of June 1989 in the broader span of recent Chinese history? How does the aftermath of the Beijing massacre help to explain events since then, including what is happening in Hong Kong today? How deep is the state-imposed amnesia about Tiananmen? What is the future of June Fourth Studies? Join authors Jeremy Brown and Louisa Lim for a discussion about these and other questions.
Jeremy Brown is Professor of History at Simon Fraser University. He is the author of June Fourth: The Tiananmen Protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989 and City Versus Countryside in Mao’s China: Negotiating the Divide.
Dr. Louisa Lim is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne and the author of The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. She was a correspondent for NPR and BBC based in China for a decade. Her new book Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong will be published in April 2022.
Image courtesy: Holly Angell

Transcript: Download Transcript

Film Screening - Happy Together
2021-09-17 08:00 - 17:00 | Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Director: Wong Kar Wai
One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung as a couple traveling through Argentina and locked in a turbulent cycle of infatuation and destructive jealousy as they break up, make up, and fall apart again and again. Setting out to depict the dynamics of a queer relationship with empathy and complexity on the cusp of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong—when the country’s LGBT community suddenly faced an uncertain future—Wong crafts a feverish look at the life cycle of a love affair that’s by turns devastating and deliriously romantic. Shot by ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle in both luminous monochrome and luscious saturated color, Happy Together is an intoxicating exploration of displacement and desire that swoons with the ache and exhilaration of love at its heart-tearing extremes. —Janus Films
Harvard IDs and masks required. Harvard affiliates can RSVP at hfastudentscreenings.eventive.org. Limited seating capacity. Questions related to this program or interest in joining the student curatorial group can be directed to Alex Vasile.

Modern Chinese Humanities Seminar featuring Laurence Coderre - The Future Is Now: On Newborn Socialist Things
2021-09-17 12:00 - 13:30 | MA
Speaker: Laurence Coderre, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies, New York University

Read the transcript of the event here.
Whereas the contemporary era in China is often depicted in terms of rampant, ideologically vacuous commodification, the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) is typically cast as a time of ubiquitous politics and scarce goods. Indeed, with the exception of the likeness and words of Mao Zedong, the media and material culture of the Cultural Revolution are often characterized as a void out of which the postsocialist world of commodity consumption miraculously sprang fully formed. I instead argue that the Cultural Revolution media environment and the ways in which its constituent elements engaged contemporaneous discourses of materiality and political economy anticipated the widespread commodification now so closely associated with the Reform Period (1978-present).
To that end, this talk offers a brief history of the “newborn socialist thing” (shehuizhuyi xinsheng shiwu), which, as a technical term originating in the 1950s, refers to a harbinger of a progressive future emerging in the present. Not only did newborn things, always at odds with “old things,” help define socialism as a transitional stage of development prior to communism, they also promised to integrate the material and the social under one conceptual roof. I develop a historical methodology inspired by the relational nature of the newborn thing, which traces fugitive constellations of objects, bodies, institutions, and social formations pertaining to the Cultural Revolution’s media environment. Of particular interest are the forms of mediation enacted by and through these constellations and the dialectic they were often said to create with the commodity-form.
Laurence Coderre is an assistant professor of East Asian Studies at New York University. She received her PhD in Chinese from UC Berkeley in 2015. Prior to moving to NYU, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan. Coderre’s work focuses on Chinese socialist and postsocialist cultural production. She is the author of Newborn Socialist Things: Materiality in Maoist China (Duke, 2021), which examines the material culture of the Cultural Revolution. Her research has appeared in Comparative Studies of Society and History, Journal of Material Culture, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, and Journal of Chinese Cinemas, as well as numerous edited volumes. She is currently embarking on a new project on theory and the everyday in the late Mao era.
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Environment in Asia Series featuring Zhang Meng - Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market
2021-09-21 13:45 - 15:00 | MA
Speaker: Zhang Meng, Assistant Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
Part of the Environment in Asia lecture series

In the Qing period, China’s population tripled, and the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for timber. Standard environmental histories have often depicted this as an era of reckless deforestation. The reality was more complex: as old-growth forests were cut down, new economic arrangements emerged to develop renewable timber resources. Timber and Forestry traces the expansion of an interregional trade network to cover the entire basin of the Yangzi River. Of driving concern were questions of sustainability: How to maintain a reliable source of timber across decades and centuries? And how to sustain a business network across a thousand miles? Delving into rare archives to reconstruct property rights systems and business histories, the book considers both the formal legal mechanisms and the informal interactions that helped balance economic profit with environmental management. This case from China has important implications for world-historical conversations on resource management, commercialization, and sustainable development.
Meng Zhang (張萌) is Assistant Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. She received her B.A. in economics from Peking University (2010) and Ph.D. in history from UCLA (2017). Zhang is a historian of late imperial China, with particular interests in economic and environmental transformations and transnational dynamics in the rise of global capitalism. Her first book, Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market (University of Washington Press, 2021), reveals the complex reality of timber trade and resource management during the flurry of commercial development in Qing China. She is working on a second project that follows the social life of edible bird’s nests through the transnational construction of knowledge, desire, trade, and credit across early modern China and Southeast Asia.

Transcript: Download Transcript

Investment Screening and Supply Chain Security: Japanese, EU, and U.S. Perspectives on China
2021-09-27 12:00 - 13:00 | MA
Panelists:
Sarah Bauerle-Danzman, Assistant Professor, Department of International Studies, Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, Indiana University Bloomington
Sophie Meunier Aitsahalia, Senior Research Scholar, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs; Co-Director, European Union Program at Princeton, Princeton University
Kristin Vekasi, Academic Associate, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University; Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and School of Policy & International Affairs, University of Maine
Moderator: Christina L. Davis, Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations; Professor of Government; Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University
For more information, please visit: https://programs.wcfia.harvard.edu/us-japan/panel-9-27-21
Presented via Zoom
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkcOiuqTIrHtGDut-qpTKogX-dwA9OLZXC

Yangyang Cheng - Those Who Fall Behind Get Beaten Up: Can Science Build a Strong China?
2021-09-28 10:30 - 11:45 | MA
Speaker: Yangyang Cheng, Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale Law School; Columnist at SupChina.
From the last Chinese empire to the current People’s Republic, generations of politicians and intellectuals have sought advanced science and technology to build a strong China. They pondered the relationship between East and West, tradition and modernity, national allegiance and cosmopolitan ideals. Their efforts have shaped the path of China’s development and mapped the contours of Chinese identity.
In this talk, I will trace their accomplishments and regrets, as well as lessons for today, through the lives of two men from my hometown of Hefei, born a century apart. One was late Qing’s most revered statesman. The other is one of the first two Nobel laureates from China. As the role of science and technology becomes one of the most contentious issues in U.S.-China relations, their stories teach about the forces that propelled China’s rise, the ways lives can be squeezed by geopolitics, and the risks of using science for state power.
Yangyang Cheng is a particle physicist and essayist. Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, MIT Technology Review, and ChinaFile, among other publications. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Yale Law School and a columnist at SupChina.|
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://asiacenter.harvard.edu/events/those-who-fallbehind-get-beaten-up-can-science-build-a-strong-china-1454
Part of the Science and Technology in Asia Seminar Series

Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Bonnie Glaser - How Great is the Risk of War Over Taiwan?
2021-09-29 12:30 - 13:45 | MA
There is an intense debate among experts over the likelihood of a near-term Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Senior US military officers have warned that a PRC military action could take place in the next six years. Such dire predictions are largely based on estimates of PLA capabilities. But even if China can seize and control Taiwan, will it do so? Assessing the potential for such an attack also requires an understanding of Xi Jinping’s strategy toward Taiwan and his risk/benefit calculus. The policies of the United States and Taiwan, and how they are viewed in Beijing, also need to be taken into account.
Speaker: Bonnie Glaser, Director, Asia Program, German Marshall Fund of the United States

Bonnie S. Glaser is director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She was previously senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Ms. Glaser is concomitantly a nonresident fellow with the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, and a senior associate with the Pacific Forum. For more than three decades, Ms. Glaser has worked at the intersection of Asia-Pacific geopolitics and U.S. policy.

Transcript: Download Transcript

The Taliban Takeover and Central Asian Security: What Will Russia and China Do?
2021-09-30 09:30 - 10:45 | MA
Speakers:
Andrey Kortunov, Director General, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC)
Yun Sun, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the East Asia Program and Director of the China Program, Stimson Center
Zuhra Halimova, Independent Consultant, Dushanbe, Tajikistan
Akram Umarov, Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh; Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow, University of World Economy and Diplomacy
Moderators:
Nargis Kassenova, Senior Fellow, Program on Central Asia, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Edward Lemon, President & CEO, The Oxus Society
The withdrawal of U.S. forces and the speedy collapse of the Afghan government are creating a new security situation and transforming the geopolitical setting of Central Asia. Fears and concerns in the region are on the rise. What will Russia, the traditional security provider, and China, the emerging provider, do? How will they deal with these new challenges and opportunities? What are the choices facing Central Asian states, and how much room for maneuver do they have? This roundtable will discuss the current policies of Russia, China and Central Asian states, and possible scenarios for future developments and their implications for the region and Eurasia at large.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Mv_PAcweTuG1C7kYtYQxsQ

Fairbank Center Panel Discussion - Transnational Aging in the Chinese Diaspora
2021-09-30 16:00 - 18:00 | MA
Panel Participants:Sara L. Friedman, Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies, Indiana UniversityRussell King, Professor of Geography, University of SussexSarah Lamb, Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanistic Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology, Brandeis UniversityAndrea Louie, Professor of Anthropology, Michigan State UniversityNicole Newendorp, Associate Director and Lecturer, Social Studies, Harvard UniversityKen Chih-Yan Sun, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology, Villanova University
Nearly 4.3 million immigrants in the United States are age sixty-five and over. Research predicts that the number of nonwhite elderly immigrants will continue to grow, doubling to 36 percent of the senior population by 2050. Although the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the lives of older migrants, the familial and social networks in which they are embedded remain in place and can translate into important protective resources. At the same time, Chinese societies – e.g., mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong – have experienced rapid and large-scale social and cultural transformation over the past few decades, resulting in complex feelings and competing perspectives by older migrants on their homeland(s). In this workshop, six scholars in the fields of migration, aging, and Chinese studies grapple with the new frontier of studies on migration and life transition by focusing on two recent ethnographies about transnational aging in the Chinese diaspora. One highlights Chinese immigrants who relocate to the US at a later life stage; the other examines long-term Taiwanese immigrants who spent decades navigating life in American society and transnationally. Through our conversation, we seek to collaboratively rethink major issues and the understudied dimensions of aging and migration.

Transcript: Download Transcript

China Humanities Seminar Featuring Stephanie Balkwill - Another Cakravartin Ruler?: Feminist History and the History of Buddhism in Early Medieval China
2021-10-04 16:00 - 17:30 | MA
Speaker: Stephanie Balkwill, Assistant Professor, Buddhist Studies, UCLA
Northern Wei 北魏 (386–534 CE) Empress Dowager Ling 靈 (d. 529) is commonly regarded as the last independent ruler of her dynasty, which descended into terminal internecine war during her regency. As a ruler, she inherited a deeply divided state. The move of the capital from Pingcheng to Luoyang in 494 created severe economic alienation for the northern peoples who had traditionally supported the rise of the dynasty, just as it made them cultural outsiders to elite politics in the new capital. Although the Empress Dowager exacerbated such geographic and ethnic tensions in her time, what is less known about her is that she also shaped Buddhist modalities of statecraft to legitimate her reign and, seemingly, attempt to manage her difficult empire. In this talk, I will analyze the Empress Dowager’s program of state Buddhism and argue that like her famous contemporary in the South, Emperor Wu 武 (r. 502–549) of the Liang 梁 (502–557), she, too, positioned herself as a universal Buddhist monarch in medieval China. In so doing, I engage the question of how our understanding of Buddhist history changes when we put women into it and I propose a series of new questions, which, based in the study of women, serve to elevate our understanding of the ways in which Buddhism became a dominant social force in early medieval China.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYuc-6vqjkjE9yzodSy0HtBA_edh2R_Xdx3

Modern China Lecture Series Featuring Isabella Weber - How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate
2021-10-05 16:00 - 17:30 | MA
Speaker: Isabella Weber, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst
China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country’s rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China’s path. In the first post-Mao decade, China’s reformers were sharply divided. They agreed that China had to reform its economic system and move toward more marketization – but struggled over how to go about it.
Should China destroy the core of the socialist system through shock therapy, or should it use the institutions of the planned economy as market creators? With hindsight, the historical record proves the high stakes behind the question: China embarked on an economic expansion commonly described as unprecedented in scope and pace, whereas Russia’s economy collapsed under shock therapy. Based on extensive research, including interviews with key Chinese and international participants and World Bank officials as well as insights gleaned from unpublished documents, the book charts the debate that ultimately enabled China to follow a path to gradual reindustrialization. Beyond shedding light on the crossroads of the 1980s, it reveals the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China through a longue durée lens. Overall, the book delivers an original perspective on China’s economic model and its continuing contestations from within and from without.
Isabella M. Weber is a political economist working on China, global trade and the history of economic thought. She is an Assistant Professor of Economics and the Research Leader for China of the Asian Political Economy Program at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Transcript: Download Transcript

Critical Issues Confronting China featuring Jeffrey S. Lehman - What Does U.S. Business Really Want From China?
2021-10-06 09:00 - 10:15 | MA
Speaker: Jeffrey Lehman, Vice Chancellor and Professor of Law, NYU Shanghai
Jeffrey Lehman is the Vice Chancellor of NYU Shanghai, where he oversees all academic and administrative operations. Lehman is an internationally acclaimed leader in higher education, having served as dean of the University of Michigan Law School, the 11th president of Cornell University, and the founding dean of the Peking University School of Transnational Law.
Prior to joining the University of Michigan Law School, Lehman served as a law clerk to Frank M. Coffin, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Associate Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court. He then spent four years at Caplin & Drysdale, a Washington, DC law firm. Throughout his professional and academic career, Lehman has volunteered his time and energy to nonprofit organizations that share his commitments in the fields of higher education, law, and technology.
Lehman received an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Cornell University, an MPP from the University of Michigan, and a JD from the University of Michigan Law School. He is a multi-award winner for his work both in the United States and abroad, including the Friendship Award, which is China’s highest honor for “foreign experts who have made outstanding contributions to the country’s economic and social progress.” Lehman is also a recipient of an honorary doctorate from Peking University.
Check back soon for more information!
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Transcript: Download Transcript

China Economy Lecture Series featuring Yeling Tan - Disaggregating China, Inc: State Strategies in the Liberal Economic Order
2021-10-07 16:00 - 17:30 | MA
Speaker: Yeiling Tan, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Oregon
Professor Yeling Tan discusses her book, Disaggregating China, Inc: State Strategies in the Liberal Economic Order. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 represented an historic opportunity to peacefully integrate a rising economic power into the international order based on market-liberal rules. Yet current economic tensions between the US and China indicate that this integration process has run into trouble. To what extent has the liberal internationalist promise of the WTO been fulfilled? To answer this question, this study breaks open the black box of the massive Chinese state and unpacks the economic strategies that central economic agencies as well as subnational authorities adopted in response to WTO rules demanding far-reaching modifications to China’s domestic institutions. The study explains why, rather than imposing constraints, WTO entry provoked divergent policy responses from different actors within the Chinese state, in ways neither expected nor desired by the architects of the WTO.
Yeiling Tan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon, and a non-resident scholar at the UC San Diego 21st Century China Center. From 2017-2020, she was a fellow of the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Future of International Trade and Investment. From 2017-2019, she was a member of the Georgetown University Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues. In 2017-18, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program in Princeton University.
​Her research interests lie at the intersection of international and comparative political economy, with an emphasis on China and the developing world. Two broad questions define her research agenda. First: how do the rules of globalization affect politics within authoritarian regimes such as China, given that these rules require increasingly far-reaching modifications to domestic institutions? Second, how do authoritarian regimes affect rule-making at the international level?
She holds a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University (2017), an MPA in International Development from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (2011) and a BA (Honors, Distinction) in International Relations and Economics from Stanford University (2002). Apart from research on globalization and China, she has also worked in the public and non-governmental sectors on a range of issues including economic development, international security policy, global governance and governance innovations.
Check back soon for more information!
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Transcript: Download Transcript

Modern Chinese Humanities Seminar Featuring Pang Laikwan - Economic Sovereignty in Contemporary China: The Biopolitical Subject as Garlic Chive
2021-10-07 20:00 - 21:30 | MA
Speaker: Pang Laikwan, Professor of Cultural Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong
This paper focuses on the wide popularity of the meme and buzzword jiucai, garlic chives, on China’s internet to investigate the cultural and political subjectivity of the ordinary Chinese citizens in a time of fierce competition simply to survive, largely known as neijuan, involution. Through this investigation of the garlic chives meme, the paper also updates Foucault’s theory of the biopolitics by investigating the deeply intertwined relation between the biological, the economic, and the political in contemporary Chinese governmentality. While the post-socialist PRC has developed a sophisticated economic rationality to legitimize its state sovereignty, this economic sovereignty also strains the ordinary subjects so much that it begins to pose serious challenge to this legitimacy.
PANG Laikwan is Professor of Cultural Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is the author of a few books, including, more recently, The Appearing Demos: Hong Kong During and After the Umbrella Movement (U of Michigan, 2021), The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China’s Cultural Revolution (Verso, 2017), andCreativity and Its Discontents: China’s Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights Offenses (Duke UP, 2012). She will be a CASBS fellow at Stanford University in the academic year of 2021-2022.
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Transcript: Download Transcript

Weixia Gu - Dispute Resolution in China: Litigation, Arbitration, Mediation and their Interactions
2021-10-07 20:30 - 22:00 | MA
Speaker: Weixia Gu, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong
For more details, including a Zoom link, please visit http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/eals/events.html.

David Cheng Chang - Escaping From the Communists and Then From the Anti-Communists: A Prisoner’s Odyssey From Southwest China to Korea, India, and Argentina
2021-10-13 10:00 - 11:30 | MA
Speaker: David Cheng Chang, Division of Humanities, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; HYI-Radcliffe Institute Fellow, 2021-22
Chair/discussant: Arunabh Ghosh, Associate Professor of History, Harvard University
By the end of the Korean War, only 88 out of more than 150,000 Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war (POWs) refused to return to either side of their divided countries; instead, they sought asylum in neutral nations. Using oral history interviews and archival documents from the United States, Taiwan, and India, this talk charts the life history of Cheng Liren: from his education as a police academy cadet during the civil war and his first job as a police officer in his home province Guizhou in the final days of the Nationalist regime, to his desperate enlistment in the Communist army, desertion in Korea, rise and fall as an anti-Communist POW leader on Koje and Cheju Islands, his daring escape from fellow anti-Communist POWs at Panmunjom, to his two-year sojourn in India, and his final settlement and business success in Argentina.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJItd-qurD8rGNJBFrr8tS6X1695eSvlSswX
More info: https://www.harvard-yenching.org/events/escaping-from-the-communists-and-then-from-the-anti-communists-a-prisoners-odyssey-from-southwest-china-to-korea-india-and-argentina/

Environment in Asia Lecture Series featuring Ruth Mostern - The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History
2021-10-13 16:00 - 17:30 | MA
Speaker: Ruth Mostern, University of Pittsburgh
This talk showcases Ruth Mostern’s new book: The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History (Yale University Press, 2021). The Yellow River explains how environmentally transformative human activity has shaped the whole watershed and constituted the relationship between people and the river since Neolithic times. The book demonstrates that the history of the relationship between people and the river is a history of soil as much as it is a history of water, and that some of the most important episodes in Yellow River history transpired on the semi-arid lands of the Loess Plateau, far from the riverbed itself. Using GIS and data analysis as well as close readings of historical sources, the book reveals that although the Yellow River floodplain was sometimes a site of frequent and devastating disasters, this was only the case at times of certain decisions about public policy and infrastructure design.
Ruth Mostern is Associate Professor of History and Director of the World History Center at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of Dividing the Realm in Order to Govern: The Spatial Organization of the Song State (960-1276 CE) (Harvard Asia Center, 2011) and the co-editor of Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana University Press, 2016). Her current book, Following the Tracks of Yu: The Imperial and Ecological Worlds of the Yellow River is in contract at Yale University Press. She is currently PI on two NEH grants: one to develop content and infrastructure for an ecosystem of digital historical gazetteers, and one to design and launch an interdisciplinary curriculum about water in Central Asia.
Check back soon for more information!
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Transcript: Download Transcript

Panel Discussion - The Future of Africa-China Engagement/Relations
2021-10-15 11:15 - 12:30 | MA
Speakers:
Maria Adele Carrai, Assistant Professor of Global China Studies, NYU Shanghai; Associate, Harvard University Asia Center
Folashadé Soulé, Senior Research Associate, Global Economic Governance Programme, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
Lina Benabdallah, Assistant Professor, Politics and International Affairs Department, Wake Forest University
Moderator: Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, Ellen Gurney Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies; Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies
Sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center; Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Center for African Studies and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University
Presented via Zoom Webinar.
Register here: https://tinyurl.com/4hs83am4

Modern China Lecture Series Featuring Fang Xiaoping - Pandemics and Politics in Mao’s China: The Rise of the Emergency Disciplinary State
2021-10-19 20:00 - 21:30 | MA
Speaker: Fang Xiaoping, Assistant Professor of History, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
During the 1961-1965 period, a cholera pandemic ravaged the southeastern coastal areas of Mao’s China which was already suffering from lingering starvation, class struggles, political campaigns and geopolitical challenges of the Cold War. This lecture focuses on the first global pandemic that had plagued China after 1949 and the resulting large-scale but clandestine emergency response. Based on rare archival documents and in-depth interviews with the ever-dwindling witnesses of the pandemic, this lecture examines the dynamics between disease and politics when the Communist Party was committed to restructuring society between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The speaker argues that disease and its control were not only affected by the social restructuring that began in the 1950s and strengthened since 1961, but also integral components of this. Quarantine, mass inoculation, epidemic surveillance and information control functionalised social control and political discipline, and therefore significantly contributed to the rise of an emergency disciplinary state, which exerted far-reaching impacts on its sociopolitical system and emergency response since Mao’s China, including the COVID-19 pandemic.
Xiaoping Fang is an assistant professor of history at the School of Humanities of the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He received his PhD in History from the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he majored in modern China and the history of science, technology and medicine in East Asia from 2002 to 2008. He studied and worked at the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge, UK (2005-2006), the Asia Research Institute of the NUS (2008), the China Research Centre of the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia (2009-2013), and the National Humanities Center, USA (2019-2020). His research interests focus on the history of medicine, health, and disease in twentieth-century China and the socio-political history of Mao’s China after 1949. He is the author of Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012) and China and the Cholera Pandemic: Restructuring Society under Mao (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021).
Presented via Zoom

Transcript: Download Transcript

Critical Issues Confronting China featuring Kellee Tsai - Evolutionary Governance under Authoritarianism in Contemporary China
2021-10-20 09:30 - 10:45 | MA
Speaker: Kellee Tsai, Dean of Humanities and Social Science and Chair Professor of Social Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
The structural transformation of China over the past several decades has given rise to a fundamental tension between the pursuit of social stability and authoritarian resilience. On the one hand, repressive strategies enable the party-state to maintain its monopoly of political power (authoritarianism). On the other hand, the quality of governance is enhanced when the state adopts softer modes of engagement with society (resilience). This dilemma lies at the core of evolutionary governance under authoritarianism. This talk engages the vast “authoritarianism with adjectives” literature in the study of contemporary China and presents case studies of state-society interactions to offer insight into the circumstances under which the party-state exerts its coercive power versus engaging in more flexible responses or policy adaptations.
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Transcript: Download Transcript

China Humanities Seminar Featuring Scott Pearce - Looking Behind the Text: The Case of Northern Wei’s ‘Yuan Pi’
2021-10-25 16:00 - 17:30 | MA
Speaker: Scott Pearce, Western Washington University
All textual traditions are based on their own particular sets of assumptions and preoccupations. This was the case of the Chinese classical tradition as well, which having taken full shape under the Han empire, continued to be used as the only available language of written record by the very different regimes that controlled the Yellow River plains after Han collapse. One of these was Northern Wei (386-534), a new kind of empire in East Asia, of Inner Asian origin, whose leadership for generations continued to speak an Inner Asian language and conceptualized the world in terms apparently quite different from those embedded in the Literary Chinese that gives the only descriptions we have of these people and their actions. Here we use the case of a royal kinsman called in the text “Yuan Pi 元丕” (422-503) to examine various ways in which we might attempt to look behind (or through, or under) received text to get a glimpse at least of the actual man.
Presented via Zoom
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIoduGupzMuG9zxpckd860pztJ_rzIMCxse

Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum Featuring Aaron Proffitt - Buddha's Name as Mantra in Medieval Japan
2021-10-25 16:00 - 17:30 | MA
Speaker: Aaron Proffitt, Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies, University at Albany-SUNY

The recitation of the name of a buddha (nenbutsu) is often associated with deathbed practices and traditions commonly grouped under the rubric Pure Land Buddhism. In this talk, Professor Aaron Proffitt will consider this widely popular practice as understood by practitioners of mantra, focusing in particular upon the work of Dohan (1179-1252), an early-medieval Japanese scholar-monk and Esoteric Pure Land theorist. While Pure Land practices such as aspiring for rebirth in a purified buddha land are often seen to be at odds with the recitation of mantra for this-worldly benefits, in fact, in medieval Japan these approaches to the practice of Buddhism were often carried out in tandem. In some cases, the nenbutsu was understood as a mantra, and because many mantras are in fact the very name of a particular buddha, bodhisattva, or god, many mantras would technically qualify as “nenbutsu.” As we will see, Dohan’s “esoteric nenbutsu” theory reveals that for some medieval Japanese Buddhist practitioners, the so-called mystery of speech as a willed act, an act of “self power,” rests in its expression of the mystery of breath, as an unwilled act, an expression of “other power.” In this way, the nenbutsu as mantra is said to transcend and collapse perceived binaries between buddhas and beings, this world and the Pure Land.
Professor Aaron Proffitt is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies at the University at Albany-SUNY. Proffitt received his PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan, and his monograph, Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism, is currently in-press with University of Hawaii Press, Pure Land Buddhist Studies series.
Presented via Zoom
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcuf-CsrDMvH9a02UR3MCAR_3t_83P_OpHa
