Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

Exhibit: Dunhuang and Beyond
2024-11-24 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-23 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-22 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-17 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-16 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-15 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-10 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-09 14:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) and 1 more date | Sackler Building, Lower Level, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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A major milestone and world-renowned heritage site within Silk Road networks, Dunhuang preserves more than 400 embellished Buddhist cave shrines in present-day northwest China.

Dunhuang’s cave shrines date from the fifth to fourteenth centuries. Each encloses visitors within murals and carved figures that depict Buddhist legends and paradises. Chronicling innumerable exemplary works of Buddhist artmaking over centuries, Dunhuang forms the largest encyclopedia art collection in situ. More significant than these artistic achievements, the caves offer a glimpse into a universe that rests beyond our known physical reality. Much like the shadowy illusions of Plato’s allegorical cave, the pictorial programs across Dunhuang’s caves reveal higher truths about life, death, and spiritual transcendence.

This fall, CAMLab contextualizes Dunhuang within Buddhism’s broader currents of space- and art-making that surged across China during the medieval period.• Immersing visitors in confluences of light and sound, the Cave Dance and Shadow Cave projects are case studies of two Dunhuang caves that reimagine the rich theatricality conjured by depictions of the dramas of the Buddha’s life and dances of transcendent beings.

• Rebuilding the world’s tallest pagoda in VR, the Embodied Architecture project invokes an 11the century transmission of these dynamics within the towering Shayka pagoda of the Fogang Monastery in present-day Yingxian, China. There, Buddhist pictorial motifs demarcate a journey of ascension toward enlightenment.

• The Digital Temple project uses an interactive interface to unpack the multiplicity of compositions and multivalent topographies rendered across the murals of Kaihua monastery.

By examining Buddhism’s three primary contexts in medieval China—the cave, the pagoda, and the temple—these CAMLab projects reveal the dramatic perceptual experiences and invisible force fields embedded by visual programs within Buddhist sites.Reserve Your Ticket

Venue

Xiaolu Ma - Transpatial Modernity: Chinese Cultural Encounters with Russia via Japan (1880–1930)
2024-11-22 10:00 - 11:00 | Presented via Zoom
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Speaker: Xiaolu Ma Assistant Professor, Division of Humanities, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Moderator: David Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

Transpatial Modernity offers the first in-depth account of the triangular relationship among Chinese, Japanese, and Russian literature and culture in the modern era. Drawing on primary sources in all three languages—among others—Xiaolu Ma reveals how Chinese writers translated and appropriated Russian cultural tropes through the intermediary of Japanese writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To trace the global journey of these literatures and ideas, Ma maps four case studies involving leading cultural figures including Leo Tolstoy, Futabatei Shimei, and Lu Xun. Together, they demonstrate the central role of relay transculturation—cultural exchange among at least three cultures, one of which serves primarily as an intermediary—as the key to understanding East Asian modernity. Not limited to a dyadic relationship between source and target culture, Transpatial Modernity explores the implications of cultural brokerage within complex transculturation process, thus establishing the value of a new transpatial framework for understanding literary and cultural exchange in local, regional, and global contexts.

Online via Zoom webinar. To join, register here: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IDsl4v7VSsyNetcMlSpMlg.

Venue

Fan Dai — Certainties out of the Uncertain: Subnational Climate Diplomacy Between the U.S. and China
2024-11-20 15:00 - 16:00 | Pierce Hall 100F, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Fan Dai, Director, California-China Climate Institute, University of California, Berkeley; Senior Fellow, Environment and Natural Resources Program and Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Dr. Fan Dai is the director of California-China Climate Institute, and adjunct faculty at Energy and Resource Group, University of California, Berkeley. She is also a Senior Fellow in the Environment and Natural Resources Program and Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research expertise includes market mechanisms for climate change mitigation, climate diplomacy and governance.

Dr. Dai was appointed by former California Governor Jerry Brown as Special Advisor to chair the state’s China Interagency Working Group and served as the liaison on critical economic and environmental initiatives with China. Previously, she served as a senior advisor at the California Environmental Protection Agency and the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, where she provided counsel on the state’s international policy and global climate partnerships. At the California-China Climate Institute, she led several critical research projects on subnational climate policy and long-term planning for carbon neutrality. Dr. Dai received her BS in law from Beijing Forestry University, her master of law from Berkeley Law, University of California, and her doctoral degree on environmental policy and economics from State University of New York at Syracuse.

Sponsored by Harvard-China Project, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

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Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Anne Stevenson-Yang — What Happens After the Chinese Miracle?
2024-11-20 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Anne Stevenson-Yang, Founder and Reseach Director, J Capital ResearchModerator: Anthony Saich,Director, Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia and Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Anne Stevenson-Yang co-founded J Capital Research, which publishes highly diligenced research reports on publicly traded companies. She also writes a weekly research piece called China Primary Insight. Over 25 years living in Beijing, Anne worked as an industry analyst and founded three businesses in online and print media and software. She is author of three published books, including Wild Ride: A Short History of the Opening and Closing of the Chinese Economy (2024, Bui Jones).

Venue

Eurasia From the East, 2024
2024-11-18 16:30 - 18:00 | CGIS South Room S354, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speakers:David Wolff, Professor, Slavic-Eurasian Research Center (SRC), Hokkaido UniversityNorihiro Naganawa, Professor on Russian and Eurasian History, Hokkaido UniversityAkihiro Iwashita, Professor, Department of Slavic-Eurasian Studies, Hokkaido UniversitySerhii Plokhii, Mykhailo S. Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History / Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute , Harvard University

As we approach the third year of the war in Ukraine, the ripples from the conflict go deeper and further into the fabric of international relations. Today’s seminar brings together three scholars from Japan to analyze the war’s impact and meaning outside Eastern Europe. Their expertise includes Russia and other world areas, including the Middle East and Northeast Asia. Issues to be addressed include Japan’s policies, historical contexts, borderlands, energy security, and China’s perspective on the war.

Refreshments will be provided.

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China Humanities Seminar featuring Ya Zuo — Fighting Feelings with Feelings: The Quanzhen Daoist Ordering of Emotional Life
2024-11-18 16:00 - 18:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Ya Zuo, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara

Quanzhen Daoism wielded a profound influence across eastern Eurasia, shaping the intellectual landscape of the Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234) and leaving a lasting impact on the Mongol Yuan empire (1279–1368). In this talk, I delve into the focus on emotions in Quanzhen philosophy. The religion emphasized the qing (emotions/feelings) as a central concept and assigned its clergy with an active role in emotional stewardship. Highly critical of conventional feelings and desires, Quanzhen Daoists sought to convert followers to a new affective regime known as the “feelings of the dao.”

Ya Zuo is an associate professor of History at University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a cultural historian of middle and late imperial China, and the author of Shen Gua’s Empiricism (Harvard Asia Center, 2018), with the Chinese translation published by Zhonghua Book Company in 2024. Driven by interdisciplinary interests, she has written a range of articles on topics such as theory of knowledge, sensory history, medical history, book history, and the history of emotions. She is currently working on a book on crying and tears in middle-period China.

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Daniel Kritenbrink — America's Future in East Asia
2024-11-18 12:00 - 13:00 | CGIS Knafel K262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Daniel Kritenbrink, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, United States Department of StateModerator: Mark Wu, Henry L. Stimson Professor, Harvard Law School; Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard UniversityAlso via Zoom. Register here.

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冷战史研究与档案的开放和利用
2024-11-18 11:30 - 13:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Zhihua Shen, Director, Center for Cold War International History Studies, East China Normal University, Shanghai

Chair: Elizabeth J. Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government, Harvard University

The presentation will be given in Chinese, with slides and Q&A in English and Chinese.

历史研究者的基本责任就在于揭开历史真相，尽可能地还原历史的本来面貌，而要做到这一点，就必须不断地发掘、梳理和解读原始档案和文献。本次讲座以中苏同盟起草、1958年炮击金门、周恩来与斯大林的黑海会谈、刘少奇与斯大林会谈等有关档案的利用与研究为案例，以此揭示冷战国际史研究与档案文献的开发与研究之间的复杂关系。

Why and how did the Cold War begin? The origins of the Cold War have been the subject of extensive study and debate. Through thorough, multilingual, and multi-archival research, China’s leading historian of the Cold War, Shen Zhihua, uses several important case studies to illustrate the complex relationships between the research on global history and the exploration and utilization of the archives on the Cold War.

沈志华，中国上海华东师范大学历史学系终身教授，冷战国际史研究中心主任，周边国家研究院院长，美国伍德罗·威尔逊国际学者中心资深研究员，太和智库高级研究员。他的研究领域包括冷战国际史、苏联史、中苏关系、中朝关系。代表著作有：《最后的“天朝”——毛泽东、金日成与中朝关系（1945-1976）》（2017、2018年增订）、《处在十字路口的选择——1956-1957年的中国》（2013年）、《无奈的选择——冷战与中苏同盟的命运》（2013年）、《思考与选择：从知识分子会议到反右派运动（1956–1957）》（2008年）等等

Zhihua Shen is the director of the Center for Cold War International History Studies at East China Normal University, Shanghai. He is the author of a number of major Chinese-language works on Cold War history, and he is the coauthor, with Yafeng Xia, of Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 1945‒1959: A New History (2015) and A Misunderstood Friendship: Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, and Sino-North Korean Relations, 1949–1976 (2018), and coauthor, with Danhui Li, of After Leaning to One Side: China and its Allies in the Cold War (2011).

Venue

Digital China Initiative Workshop — Building a Digital Collection with GenAI Tools
2024-11-15 14:00 - 16:00 | Room 202, 61 Kirkland St., 61 Kirkland St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
register here

This workshop focuses on leveraging GenAI tools to create, manage, and analyze digital collections for Literary Sinitic Studies. Participants will learn basic database concepts, use Nocodb for data storage, and explore how GenAI can assist in scraping, cleaning, and classifying data. The workshop will also cover fundamental analysis techniques for the resulting digital collection.

Target Audience:

Faculty and students in Literary Sinitic Studies interested in building digital archives

Librarians and archivists working with Chinese language materials

Anyone looking to create and manage digital collections efficiently using AI tools

Workshop Objectives:

Understand basic database concepts and learn to use Nocodb for data storage

Explore GenAI tools for web scraping, data cleaning, and classification

Develop skills in basic data analysis using the created digital collection

Also held November 1 and 8.

Registration Page

Venue

Conference: Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism and the Institution of the Dalai Lama
2024-11-14 16:00 - 2024-11-15 17:30 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Reincarnation recognition began in the 13th century as a distinctive practice in Tibetan Buddhism to ensure continuity in spiritual authority across successive lives of religious masters. Over time such recognized reincarnations took on significant temporal power as well, particularly the line of the Dalai Lamas who were instrumental in the formation of the Tibetan Ganden Phodrang government in the 17th century. This conference will look at the history across the region, the esoteric practices of rebirth and divination, and the modern-day geopolitical implications of the continuation of this practice in Tibetan, Himalayan, Mongolian, and Central Asian communities — and indeed across the Buddhist world in Asia and beyond.

Day 1: Thursday, November 14, 20244:00 p.m. – Opening and Introductions Michael Puett, Harvard UniversityJanet Gyatso, Harvard University

5:00 p.m. Reception

Day 2: Friday, November 15, 2024

8:15 – 9:00 a.m. Breakfast

9:00 – 9:15 a.m. Welcome

9:15-11:15 a.m. Panel 1: Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism and Beyond Moderator: Michael Szonyi, Harvard UniversityPanelists:Weirong Shen, Tsinghua UniversityBodhisattvas in Saṃsāra: The Avalokiteśvara Cult and the Reincarnation of Tibetan LamasTengyur Rinpoche, Thubten Shedrubling Foundation The History of Reincarnated Lamas in TibetTawni Tidwell, University of Wisconsin–MadisonLife in Suspension with Death: Biocultural Ontologies, Perceptual Cues, and Biomarkers for the Tibetan Tukdam Postmortem Meditative State

Sangseraima Ujeed, University of MichiganThe Ocean Lama: The Dalai Lamas of the Mongols

Nicole Willock, Old Dominion University Authenticity and Authority: Methodological Pathways for Understanding the Tulku Institution

11:15-11:30 a.m. Break

11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. Panel 2: Ganden Phodrang, Regents, and Succession

Moderator: Janet Gyatso, Harvard University

Panelists:Martin Mills, University of AberdeenThe Ganden Podrang: Sovereignty and Succession Under the Dalai Lamas

Cameron Warner, Aarhus UniversityTibet’s Regents: A Historical Overview of the Men Tasked with Finding the Dalai Lama

Hon-Shiang Lau, City University of Hong KongChinese Primary-Source Official Records on Using a Golden Urn to Identify a New Dalai Lama

1:00-2:00 p.m. Lunch

2:00-3:30 p.m. Panel 3: The Present Dalai Lama and GeopoliticsModerator: William Kirby, Harvard University

Panelists: Jigme Yeshi, University of CalcuttaCompassion in Praxis – The Life and Legacy of the 14th Dalai Lama

Allen Carlson, Cornell UniversityWho’s Next (And Why It Matters So): Reincarnates (Especially the Dalai Lama Lineage, Particularly the 14th, Tenzin Gyatso) and the Coming Crisis in Tibet-China Relations

Tenzin Dorjee, Columbia UniversityBeijing’s Reincarnation Games: Why the Chinese Communist Party Wants the Dalai Lama to be Reborn

3:30-3:45 p.m. Break

3:45-5:15 p.m. Panel 4: Buddhist World in Asia and BeyondModerator: Michael Puett, Harvard University

Panelists:Lobsang Sangay, Harvard UniversityCo-opting the Sacred: The Intersection of Atheist Governance and Tibetan Buddhist Spiritual Authority

Josh Rogin, The Washington PostProspects of US Tibet Policy in the Next Administration

Dibyesh Anand, University of WestminsterCompeting Notions of Sovereignty: Tibet, China, and the Politicizing of Reincarnation

5:15-5:30 p.m. Conclusion

Venue

Angela Zhang —U.S. Tech Policy Toward China: Growing Parallels Between Washington and Beijing?
2024-11-14 12:20 - 13:20 | Morgan Courtroom, Austin Hall, 1515 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Angela Huyue Zhang, Professor of Law, University of Southern California, Gould School of Law

In this talk, I will pose the provocative question of whether America is now acting like China in its attempt to contain China’s technological rise. Amid the escalating Sino-U.S. tech war, the United States has built an unprecedented legal machine aimed at curbing China’s technological advancements. From imposing stringent sanctions on Chinese tech giants to restricting China’s access to advanced semiconductor chips and equipment, the U.S. government has intensified efforts to slow China’s progress in key sectors. In parallel, it has heightened scrutiny over both inbound and outbound investments related to China, passed a law that could lead to a nationwide ban on Tik Tok, and imposed steep tariffs on Chinese high-tech goods such as electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels. Meanwhile, U.S. agencies have significantly ramped up enforcement against espionage activities, disproportionately targeting ethnic Chinese scientists, which has led to a talent exodus in recent years.

Drawing from my newly released book, High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy, I will explore the striking parallels between the U.S. and China’s regulatory governance. Through a deep dive into the structure, processes, and outcomes of U.S. legal strategies, I will unravel the dynamic complexities and unintended consequences of U.S. legal actions against China. Additionally, I will offer proposals on how the United States can recalibrate its tech policy to enhance resilience and maintain its competitive edge in the fast-changing technological landscape.

Angela Huyue Zhang is a Professor of Law at the USC Gould School of Law. Zhang has broad research interests in the areas of law and economics, particularly in transnational legal issues bearing on businesses. Widely recognized as a leading authority on Chinese tech regulation, she has written extensively on this topic. Her first book, Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism: How the Rise of China Challenges Global Regulation, was named one of the Best Political Economy Books of the Year by ProMarket in 2021. Her second book, High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy, released in March 2024, has been covered in The New York Times, Bloomberg, Wire China, MIT Tech Review and many other international news outlets. Zhang is currently conducting research on the regulation of artificial intelligence, with plans to teach and write on this topic in the coming years. Before joining USC Gould in 2024, Zhang taught at the University of Hong Kong, New York University School of Law, and King’s College London.

Boxed lunch will be provided.

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Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Tyler Jost — Bureaucracy and Blunder: How Politics Shapes China’s Policymaking
2024-11-13 16:30 - 18:00 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Tyler Jost, Assistant Professor of Political Science, International & Public Affairs and Watson Institute Assistant Professor of China Studies, Brown UniversityModerator: Joseph Fewsmith, Professor of International Relations and Political Science, Boston University; Fairbank Center AssociateWhen are China’s leaders able to extract quality information from their diplomatic, defense, and intelligence bureaucracies during international crises? Tyler Jost’s book, Bureaucracies at War, examines the Chinese national security bureaucracy in comparative perspective. Jost highlights how China’s leaders face a trade-off between institutional designs that offer political security and those that yield quality information. He illustrates this intuition through detailed historical cases on the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict and the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war.

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Haiyang Lin — Discrepancies Between Estimated and Actual Wind Power Generation in the U.S. and China
2024-11-13 15:00 - 16:00 | Pierce Hall 100F, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Haiyang Lin, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard-China Project

The urgency of addressing climate change is evident, and wind energy plays a vital role in global strategies to reduce carbon emissions and transition toward a sustainable energy future. Accurate assessments of wind resources are crucial for this transition. However, current wind energy development and research heavily rely on meteorological datasets, which, despite their widespread use, exhibit significant discrepancies both internally and in comparison to actual wind power generation. These discrepancies, though not widely recognized, can lead to ineffective decision-making, resulting in substantial economic and energy losses. This talk will examine these issues by comparing estimates from multiple datasets to real-world wind power generation across 1,276 wind farm sites in the United States and 10,032 sites in China.

In the U.S., our analysis reveals significant regional discrepancies, particularly in coastal areas where actual generation far exceeds estimates. For example, in some regions, models project only one-third of the actual generation observed. While incorporating factors such as air density and wake loss into assessments could reduce these gaps, it may introduce additional biases at the plant level, complicating the accuracy of future predictions. Wind farm attributes, such as the operation year, show strong correlations with estimation accuracy, emphasizing the decline in turbine performance with age. Moreover, comparisons among models reveal that capacity factors amplify wind speed differences by 2-3 times, highlighting the need to leverage accessible wind generation data to enhance meteorological products and improve predictive accuracy.

In China, the discrepancy between theoretical and real-world outcomes is equally significant, with regions like Inner Mongolia showing an estimated capacity factor (CF) of 35%-60%, yet only achieving an actual CF of 25.9% in 2023—surprisingly lower than Yunnan’s 32.4%. Such large gaps can lead to misguided planning and ineffective strategies for wind power expansion. China’s main issue lies in the underperformance of wind farms, with much of the wind energy potential remaining untapped. Integration of energy storage across different time scales, and adapting the grid to serve emerging loads like hydrogen production, AI computing, and electric vehicles can help to address this issue and accelerate China’s path to carbon neutrality.

Venue

Urban China Lecture Series featuring Liu Zheng — Chinese Greenways: Innovative Planning, Governance, and Urbanism
2024-11-12 20:30 - 22:00 | Presented via Zoom
zoom meeting link

Speakers: Liu Zheng, Associate Professor of Urban Planning, South China University of Technology

Greenways are linear green corridors that are planned, designed, and managed for multi-use purposes. The introduction of the greenway concept to China, particularly from the American context, can be traced back to the 1990s. However, widespread development of greenways in China only began after 2010, when Guangdong Province initiated its first regional greenway plan. This lecture will first explore how this American-based concept led to a political campaign in Guangdong. The second part will elaborate on the challenges of legitimizing greenway objectives and achieving institutional arrangements within the unique bureaucratic framework of Chinese regional governance. Following this, the discussion will address post-campaign improvement strategies in Guangdong and other regions, highlighting innovative planning practices that are commonly present yet often overlooked in China.

This event series is sponsored by the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning, and the Harvard University Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Presented via Zoom Meeting.Meeting link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/93343229272

Venue

Fei Huang — Bathing Through Time and Landscape: A Longue Durée History of Hot Springs in China (1000–1945)
2024-11-12 10:30 - 11:45 | Presented via Zoom
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Speaker: Fei Huang, Professor of Chinese History and Society, University of Tübingen

Part of the Science and Technology in Asia series. Sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center. Co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

Presented via Zoom. Register at: https://scholar.harvard.edu/seow/STinAsia

Venue

Taiwan Studies Workshop — The American Election Results: The View from Taipei
2024-11-11 20:00 - 21:30 | Presented via Zoom
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Panelists:Christine Lai, Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica, TaiwanKevin Luo, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota Twin CitiesAndrew Nien-dzu Yang, Secretary General, Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies (CAPS)Steven M. Goldstein, Taiwan Studies Workshop Director, Harvard University Fairbank Center for Chinese StudiesThis event takes place at 8:00PM EST on November 11 / 9:00AM Taipei Time on November 12Presented via Zoom Meeting. Register Here.

Venue

Digital China Initiative Workshop — Building a Digital Collection with GenAI Tools
2024-11-08 14:00 - 16:00 | Room 202, 61 Kirkland St., 61 Kirkland St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
register here

This workshop focuses on leveraging GenAI tools to create, manage, and analyze digital collections for Literary Sinitic Studies. Participants will learn basic database concepts, use Nocodb for data storage, and explore how GenAI can assist in scraping, cleaning, and classifying data. The workshop will also cover fundamental analysis techniques for the resulting digital collection.

Target Audience:

Faculty and students in Literary Sinitic Studies interested in building digital archives

Librarians and archivists working with Chinese language materials

Anyone looking to create and manage digital collections efficiently using AI tools

Workshop Objectives:

Understand basic database concepts and learn to use Nocodb for data storage

Explore GenAI tools for web scraping, data cleaning, and classification

Develop skills in basic data analysis using the created digital collection

Also held November 1 and 15.

Registration Page

Venue

PRC @ 75 – Memory as Resistance: From Tiananmen to Hong Kong featuring Rowena Xiaoqing He
2024-11-07 16:30 - 18:00 | Hall A, Science Center, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Rowena Xiaoqing He (何曉清), Senior Research Fellow, University of Texas Austin; author, Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in ChinaDiscussant: Anthony Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs; Director, Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia, Harvard Kennedy School

This talk is grounded in over two decades of fieldwork on the preservation of historical memory tabooed by the CCP regime. Drawing on contextualized personal accounts, Rowena He will illuminate the unequal contest between state-imposed interpretations of history and independent scholarship on China’s forbidden past, and their implications for nationalism, democratization, and the field of China Studies. Highlighting her extensive interactions with local and mainland Chinese students during Hong Kong’s unprecedented social movement, she illustrates how memory becomes a form of resistance that embodies citizen autonomy and agency. The power of the powerless.

Rowena Xiaoqing He (何曉清) is a China specialist and historian of modern China. She is interested in the nexus of history, memory, and power, and their implications for the relationship between academic freedom and public opinion, human rights and democratization, and youth values and nationalism. Her first book, Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China, was named Top Five Books 2014 by the Asia Society’s China File. The book has been reviewed in the New York Review of Books, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New Statesman, Spectator, Christian Science Monitor, China Journal, Human Rights Quarterly, and other international periodicals. Her research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the National Humanities Center. Dr. He received the Harvard University Certificate of Teaching Excellence for three consecutive years for the Tiananmen courses that she created. She joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2019 and received the Faculty of Arts Outstanding Teaching Award in 2020 and 2021. In 2023, she was denied a Hong Kong work visa to return to her position as an Associate Professor of History. Her op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, and The Wall Street Journal. She was designated among the Top 100 Chinese Public Intellectuals 2016. Born and raised in China, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.

Venue

Transforming Classical Chinese Texts into Searchable Databases with AI
2024-11-07 12:00 - 13:00 | CGIS South Room S354, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Guenther Lomas, Founder, Sigtica

As artificial intelligence becomes integral to the digital humanities, it offers innovative methods that transform research capabilities and uncover new insights into historical texts and cultural narratives. This talk will demonstrate how AI-powered pipelines can process large volumes of unstructured classical Chinese texts, such as genealogies and Qing dynasty government employee records, including those from the Da Qing jin shen quan shu, into organized, searchable databases.

The pipeline addresses a longstanding challenge in classical Chinese studies: the labor-intensive manual data entry process. It is designed to efficiently process millions of pages from historical Chinese texts, tackling complexities like layout identification and precision in text extraction. Central to this effort is customized Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which enhances data extraction accuracy and identifies key fields using Named Entity Recognition (NER) models. The result is clean, tabular databases that improve accessibility, allowing researchers to analyze Chinese historical content with unprecedented efficiency. Furthermore, this methodology holds potential applications for other languages, including Japanese, Korean, Arabic and Latin, broadening its impact.

By exploring these methodologies and their implications, this presentation aims to show how integrating advanced technological tools enriches scholarly inquiry in the digital humanities, providing deeper insights into patterns and narratives within Chinese history and beyond. This approach promises to revolutionize data collection, paving the way for alternative research practices across various linguistic contexts.

Lunch will be provided. Registration required

Venue

Kaiping Zhang — Governing China in the Digital Age: Legacies, Challenges, and Transformations
2024-11-07 11:30 - 13:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Kaiping Zhang, Associate Professor, Political Science, Tsinghua University; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2024-25Chair/Discussant: Yuhua Wang,Professor of Government, Harvard University

China has carried numerous historical legacies of governance from the imperial and revolutionary eras into the digital age. How do these historical shadows clash with a modernized, networked society? Drawing on computational analyses of extensive data on propaganda, government documents, and public opinion, this talk examines how China has adapted its governance practices to meet contemporary challenges —and whether these adaptations have been effective. The aim is to offer insights into the future prospects of China and its engagement with the world.

Venue

Visiting Fellow Presentation and Discussion featuring Mitch Presnick — Leveraging China's Strengths as Alternative to Decoupling: Opportunities for Multinational Companies
2024-11-06 16:00 - 17:30 | Presented via Zoom
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Speaker: Mitch Presnick, Visiting Fellow of Practice, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies; Founder, Super 8 Hotels, ChinaDiscussant: William Kirby, Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration and T.M. Chang Professor of China Studies, Harvard University

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping Relaunched his “Reform and Opening” policy to leverage Western technology and know-how for China’s development … Deng recognized that China’s modernization required both pragmatism and humility. Today, the roles are reversing. Leaders of multinational corporations must adopt a certain Deng-like pragmatism and humility. Those who do will see profitable global growth and will have a leg up in their home markets, provided they seize opportunities in the four key strengths of the Chinese economy.

Presented via Zoom. Register here.

Venue

Modern China Lecture Series featuring Selda Altan — Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan–Indochina Railway
2024-11-05 16:00 - 17:30 | CGIS Knafel K262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Selda Altan, Assistant Professor of History, Randolph College

This talk explores labor conflicts during the construction of the French railway between China and Vietnam (1898–1910) as an episode in the emergence of Chinese workers as a global working class. Drawing on Chinese, French, and English sources, the discussion reveals how inter-colonial competition for cheap labor and the global circulation of anti-Chinese discourses shaped labor market dynamics in China. These developments set the stage for labor to emerge as a radical force in Chinese politics.

Venue
