Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

The United States Indo-Pacific Strategy: A Conversation with Assistant Secretary of State Daniel J. Kritenbrink
2022-10-19 16:00 - 17:15 (America/New_York) | Malkin Penthouse, Littauer Building, 79 JFK St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Daniel J. Kritenbrink, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs

Please join the Asia-Pacific Initiative and Future of Diplomacy Project for a conversation with Daniel J. Kritenbrink, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. The Assistant Secretary will deliver remarks on the Biden Administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, followed by a conversation moderated by Chris Li (Director of the Asia-Pacific Initiative) and Erika Manouselis (Manager of the Future of Diplomacy Project).

Advance registration is required, and attendance is limited to current Harvard affiliates (students, staff, faculty, fellows).

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Annabelle Pitkin - Renunciation and the Practice of Care: Himalayan Buddhist Embodiments of Longing and Devotion
2022-10-19 17:00 - 19:00 | Barker Center, Thompson Room, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, 02138
Speaker: Annabella Pitkin, Assistant Professor of Buddhism and East Asian Religions, Lehigh UniversityDevotion plays a central role in Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist accounts of guru-disciple relationship, part of an ideal of indivisible connection between gurus and disciples. This theme of devotional connection intersects in complex ways with another influential Buddhist ideal, that of renunciation. Tibetan narratives of renunciation often highlight dynamics of separation, departure, and absence, dynamics that can appear in tension with the devotional ideal. Yet separation from the guru can also affectively energize practices of guru-devotion through generating longing, in ways that Tibetan and Himalayan commentators assert as soteriologically indispensable. This talk focuses on episodes from stories about the life of the twentieth century Himalayan Buddhist renunciant Khunu Lama Tenzin Gyaltsen (1895-1977) that highlight both his own intensive practices of renunciation, and the impact of his renunciation on his close disciples, both women and men. I consider ways in which Khunu Lama’s disciples attempted to practice forms of devotional care for him, while grappling with the separations his practice of renunciation required within their relationships. Annabella Pitkin is Assistant Professor of Buddhism and East Asian Religions at Lehigh University. Her research focuses on Tibetan Buddhist modernity, Buddhist ideals of renunciation, miracle narratives, and Buddhist biographies. She received her B.A. from Harvard and Ph.D. in Religion from Columbia, and has lived and traveled extensively in the Himalayan region, China, India, and Nepal. She is the author of Renunciation and Longing: The Life of a 20th Century Himalayan Buddhist Saint (Chicago).

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CAMLab Cave Opening Celebration
2022-10-19 18:00 - 21:00 | Sackler Building Auditorium, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
CAMLab Cave opens following two years of renovation. It serves as a hub of innovative forms of knowledge production, pedagogy, and sensorial media practice. The Opening Celebration features projects that will materialize as immersive installations this fall.

Based upon multi-year interdisciplinary research on the Buddhist culture of dance in Dunhuang, Cave Dancerecovers and animates dance forms preserved in medieval Buddhist cave shrines by harnessing technologies such as machine learning, motion capture, and computer-generated images. Cave Dance manifests as a set of installations that lead audiences into the cultural dimension of Buddhist dance—inviting audiences to contemplate themes of body, life, and spiritual transcendence.

Also installed as an immersive film, Embodied Architecture transports viewers to Liao dynasty Buddhist pagodas, each fully reconstructed in VR. The Opening Celebration will highlight other ongoing projects, ranging from the cultural heritage preservation of Digital Gandhara to a forthcoming book and art film on the modern ink painter Liu Kuo-sung.

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China Humanities Seminar featuring Kaijun Chen - Materiality is Uncertainty: Furniture, Hairpins and Fireworks in Jin Ping Mei
2022-10-24 16:00 - 18:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Kaijun Chen, Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Studies, Brown University

This project responds to a candid question I had while reading Jin Ping Mei. The novel is packed with luxurious things, but why do the characters show little attachment to them? This lack of attachment refers to both the alienable qualities of material possessions and the lack of any emotional investment in the novel’s abundance of things. This tendency stands in contrast to the metaphorized artifacts wrapped in layers of poetic references that we often encounter in odes on things and novels such as The Story of Stone, where material things bear intense lyrical expression and carry moral symbolism.

I will analyze three categories of things represented in text and in illustration to uncover a pervasive sense of uncertainty manifested by things in the novel. Furniture, especially beds, showcase shifting claims of ownership and volatile prices. Gold and silver accessories, particularly hairpins, as (false) proof of amorous commitment, exhibit inconstant material forms and truth values. Fireworks, in their short-lived performances, simultaneously anchor and distract attention, and redefine luxurious things as ephemeral happenings.

Kaijun Chen is Assistant Professor of late imperial Chinese literature and material culture at the Department of East Asian studies at Brown University. His research focuses on the manufacture of ceramics at court and the circulation of handicraft knowledge from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. He has published articles on craft and literature and the trade of luxury goods in Arts of Asia, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, and Reviews, and National Palace Bi-monthly, etc. His book Porcelain for the Emperor: Manufacture and Technocracy in Qing China (January 2023) examines the Qing court’s institutionalization of technical expertise in the context of its cultural industry during the eighteenth century. Before joining Brown, he worked at the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and the Frick Collection.

This is a hybrid event, which may be attended in person or via Zoom.

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Yi Li - Building Chinese City-Regions Under State Entrepreneurialism
2022-10-24 20:30 - 22:00 | Presented via Zoom
Zoom meeting link

Speaker: Yi Li, Associate Professor, School of Public Administration/National Research Center for Resettlement (NRCR), Hohai University

The past decade has witnessed a variety of city-regional projects across the world, such as the formulation of city-regional plans, the establishment of inter-regional organizations, and the construction of region-wide infrastructure. For some, city-regions are seen as a geopolitical project orchestrated from above by the national state in the global age of late capitalism. For others, city-regions are best approached from below, under the logic of territorial alliances or growth coalitions. However, geopolitical motivations and regional coalitions cannot alone fully explain the actual mechanism of city-regionalism in the Chinese context. Drawing on the governance framework of state entrepreneurialism, this paper distinguishes between the processes of the centrally orchestrated regional imaginary and local implementation through regional cooperation in the making of Chinese city-regions. It traces the latest round of regional integration in the Yangtze River Delta through three different practices: ascendant collaborative technological parks under inter-city partnerships, connecting regional infrastructure under regional associations, and the creation of a regional collaboration demonstration zone. Through these case studies, this paper aims to understand the processes of city-region building as well as its inherent contradictions in the Chinese context.

Yi Li is an associate professor at the School of Public Administration/National Research Center for Resettlement (NRCR) of Hohai University, Nanjing, China. Yi’s research interests lie in the formation and governance of city-regions. Her work has covered the three dominant mega city-regions in China, including the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. She approaches different aspects of Chinese regional governance from planning, cooperation towards provision of infrastructures and housing.

Zoom link: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/96217779608

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Chia-Ling Wu - Making Multiple Babies: The Anticipatory Governance of Assisted Reproduction in Japan and Taiwan
2022-10-25 10:30 - 11:45 | Presented via Zoom
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Speaker: Chia-Ling Wu, Professor, National Taiwan University

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Kenneth Rogoff in conversation with Yuanchen Yang and David Yang - China’s Housing Conundrum
2022-10-26 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Kenneth Rogoff, Maurits C. Boas Chair of International Economics, Harvard University

In Conversation With:Yuanchen Yang, Economist in the Macro-Policy Division of the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department, International Monetary Fund, andDavid Yang, Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard University

Kenneth Rogoff is Maurits C. Boas Chair of International Economics at Harvard University. From 2001–2003, Rogoff served as Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund. His widely-cited 2009 book with Carmen Reinhart, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, shows the remarkable quantitative similarities across time and countries in the run-up and the aftermath of severe financial crises. Rogoff is also known for his seminal work on exchange rates and on central bank independence. Together with Maurice Obstfeld, he is co-author of Foundations of International Macroeconomics, a treatise that has also become a widely-used graduate text in the field worldwide. Rogoff’s 2016 book The Curse of Cash looks at the past, present and future of currency from standardized coinage to crypto-currencies. The book argues that although much of modern macroeconomics abstracts from the nature of currency, it is in fact lies at the heart of some of the most fundamental problems in monetary policy and public finance. His monthly syndicated column on global economic issues is published in over 50 countries.

This event also available on Zoom. Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_1zjnpsJ8QfSeeGw5Dt7R1Q

YouTube recording of “Kenneth Rogoff in conversation with Yuanchen Yang and David Yang – China’s Housing Conundrum”

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Tarun Khanna - Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India,from Antiquity to the Present
2022-10-26 12:00 - 13:15 | Presented via Zoom
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Speaker: Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Strategy Unit, Harvard Business School; Director, The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard UniversityDiscussant: Alisha Holland, Chair, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Business and Government. Associate Professor, Department of Government, Harvard UniversityChair: Erez Manela, Acting Center Director (2022–2023); Director, Graduate Student Programs. Professor of History, Department of History, Harvard University.

How do societies identify and promote merit? Enabling all people to fulfill their potential, and ensuring the selection of competent and capable leaders are central challenges for any society. These are not new concerns. Scholars, educators, and political and economic elites in China and India have been pondering them for centuries and continue to do so today, with enormously high stakes.

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Debt and Financial Risk from China's Real Estate Sector: Michael Pettis and Hui Shan
2022-10-27 09:00 - 10:30 | Presented via Zoom
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Speakers:Michael Pettis, Professor of Finance, Peking UniversityHui Shan, Managing Director and Chief China Economist, Goldman Sachs

Concluding Remarks:William Overholt, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School

Moderators:Richard Yarrow and Jinlin Li, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School

Real estate has had a vast influence on China’s economy. In particular, real estate has taken a massive role across China’s financial system — accounting for an estimated 70 percent of Chinese households’ assets, 30 percent of local governments’ revenues, and almost 30 percent of all outstanding bank loans before the pandemic.

As China’s real estate sector faces a sharp crisis, what are the implications for the financial system and the financial health of China’s broader economy? What are China’s debt risks as real estate prices plateau or fall?

Please join experts on China’s financial sector for this discussion. This event is the second in a series on China’s real estate sector and its broader economic effects.

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LGBTQ Rights Advocacy in China: Status and Challenges
2022-10-27 12:30 - 13:20 | Wasserstein Hall 1019, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speakers:Yanhui Peng, Former Director, LGBT Rights Advocacy ChinaZhijun Hu, Founder, China’s Parents, Family, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)Wei Wei, Professor of Sociology, East China Normal University; Visiting Scholar, Harvard-Yenching Institute

If 5% of the population are members of the LGBTQ community, China’s LGBTQ population reaches at least 70 million. Over the past two decades, the LGBTQ community in China has become increasingly visible and diverse. Meanwhile, the community, civil society, and scholars also face unique challenges as they seek to provide social services, conduct queer studies, and disseminate queer theory in higher education institutions in China.

This panel features three activists/scholars sharing their insights into China’s LGBTQ movement over the past 20 years, ongoing challenges, and future prospects of the movement.

Lunch will be provided. RSVP at: tinyurl.com/HLSChinaLGBTQ.

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Hopkins-Nanjing Center Open House
2022-10-27 15:30 - 17:00 | First Floor Seminar Room, 9 Kirkland Place, 9 Kirkland Place, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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The Johns Hopkins University Hopkins-Nanjing Center will hold an information session for students interested in graduate study in China. Madeline Satin, Assistant Director of Admissions at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, will be visiting to speak about the Hopkins-Nanjing Center’s graduate programs. To schedule a one-on-one appointment or admissions interview with her, visit https://applygrad.jhu.edu/register/?id=5a4768e1-3312-4182-8c30-c6723054586f.

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Ching Kwan Lee - Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive Frontier
2022-10-28 12:00 - 13:30 | Presented via Zoom
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Speaker: Ching Kwan Lee, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

Was Hong Kong 2019 a “Revolution of Our Times”?

What was “revolutionary” about the anti-extradition movement? Turning its aspirational and stirring slogan into an empirical question, this talk assesses the breakthroughs and limits of the historic uprising, against an entrenched colonial hegemony co-produced by British and Chinese rules. Specifically, we shall review four salient elements of this hegemony that have long defined the boundaries of the “political” in Hong Kong – rule of law, capitalist /market rationality, prosperity and stability, and inevitability of China. To what extent, how and why had protesters and citizens shattered these colonial boundaries through collective praxis and deliberations? As a critical moment in the long struggle for decolonization, what were the lessons of 2019?

Ching Kwan Lee is a professor of sociology at UCLA. She is the author of three award-winning monographs on contemporary China’s turn to capitalism: Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women (1998), Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (2007), and The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor and Foreign Investment in Africa (2017). She is the founding chair of the Society for Hong Kong Studies, and her latest book on Hong Kong is Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive Frontier (2022).

Please email jviator@fas.harvard.edu for the Zoom link. You can also join the mailing list to automatically receive all Zoom invites for this series.

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Panel Discussion - Lu Xun and World Literature: The Task of Translation
2022-10-28 20:00 - 21:30 | Presented via Zoom
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Panelists: Eileen Cheng, Pomona CollegeDavid Damrosch, Harvard UniversityTheodore Huters, University of California Los AngelesYing Hu, University of California – IrvineModerator:David Wang, Harvard University

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Visiting Scholars Present
2022-10-31 12:30 - 15:00 | CGIS South, Room S153, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Fairbank Center Scholars will share current research on China-North Korea relations, Taiwan identity and history, and land rights in China. Each short presentation will be followed by Q & A discussion. Please join us for all or part of the workshop!If attending by Zoom, register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0lfuuqqD8jGtVqgJrijXeU-EDRc_Av2elO

12:30 pm – Lunch12:50 pm – Welcome1:00 pm – Dr. Seong-Hyon Lee: China-North Korea Relations in the Era of U.S.-China Rivalry1:30 pm – Prof. Chia-hung Tsai: Interdependence and Independence: A Case Study of Taiwan2:00 pm – Dr. Nan-Hsu Chen: Global Resources and China’s War Preparations in the 1870s2:30 pm – Dr. Saul Wilson: The Landlord State: Building State Control over Land Allocation2:55 pm – Closing Remarks

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East Asian Ghost Stories Gathering
2022-10-31 15:00 - 17:00 | Room 102, 9 Kirkland Place, 9 Kirkland Place, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Join us for Halloween goodies and spooky stories. Bring your favorite creepy tale to share, or just come listen! All Harvard students, faculty, & staff welcome. RSVP and direct questions to naia_poyer@fas.harvard.edu.

Hosted by the East Asian Studies Undergraduate Concentration

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Lan Li - Sea Shells: Metaphor, Anatomy, and Epistemology of Brainlessness
2022-11-01 10:30 - 11:45 | Presented via Zoom
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Speaker: Lan Li

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Critical Issues Confronting China featuring Winston Ma - Blockchain, Digital Currency, and the Post-20th Party Congress US-China Tech Race
2022-11-02 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Blockchain,

Digital Currency,

and the

Post-20th

Party Congress

US-China

Tech Race

Register for hybrid zoom attendance

Speaker: Winston Ma, Author of The Hunt for Unicorns, The Digital War, andBlockchain and Web3；Adjunct Professor, NYU Law School; former MD and Head of North America at China Investment Corporation (CIC), China’s Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Unlike many other countries, China takes a bifurcated approach to blockchains. China government has actively promoted the digital technology of blockchain and used it for the sovereign digital currency, but it strictly prohibited crypto mining and trading at the same time. Similarly, relating to the latest Web3 and metaverse developments, China’s tech companies will create a “token-less” metaverse ecosystem with unique Chinese characteristics. Using the blockchain and CBDC as an example, we may better understand China’s latest innovation policy and the post-20th Party Congress US-China tech race, from AI and semiconductor chips to quantum computing and electric cars.

Winston Ma, CFA & Esq., is an investor, attorney, author, and adjunct professor in the global digital economy. He is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of CloudTree Ventures, a seed to early growth stage venture capital firm empowering interactive entertainment companies. He is currently the board Chairman of Nasdaq-listed MCAA, a European tech SPAC, a board member of International Data Center Authority (IDCA), an advisory board member of Capgemini, and an Adjunct Professor at NYU Law School.

Most recently for 10 years, he was Managing Director and Head of North America Office for China Investment Corporation (CIC), China’s sovereign wealth fund. Prior to that, Mr. Ma served as the deputy head of equity capital markets at Barclays Capital, a vice president at J.P. Morgan investment banking, and a corporate lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. He was selected a 2013 Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum (WEF), and in 2014 he received the NYU Distinguished Alumni Award.

Mr. Ma is one of a small number of native Chinese who have worked as investment professionals and practicing capital markets attorneys in both the United States and China. A nationally certified Software Programmer as early as 1994, Mr. Ma is the book author of eight books, including The Digital War: How China’s Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain and Cyberspace (2021) and The Hunt for Unicorns: How Sovereign Funds are Reshaping Investment in the Digital Economy (2020). His latest book “Blockchain and Web3 – Building the Cryptocurrency, Privacy, and Security Foundations of the Metaverse” was released by Wiley in September 2022.

Cosponsored by: Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society

YouTube recording of “Critical Issues Confronting China featuring Winston Ma – Blockchain, Digital Currency, and the Post-20th Party Congress US-China Tech Race”

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Jingran Zhang - Characterization and Environmental Impacts of Chinese and Global Aviation Emissions of CO2 and Air Pollutants
2022-11-02 15:00 - 16:15 | Pierce Hall 100F, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Jingran Zhang, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard-China Project

Jingran Zhang studies transportation energy and environmental issues, with a special focus on the global aviation sector. She received her Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University. Sponsored by the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy, and Environment, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.QUESTIONS? Contact Kellie Nault

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Modern China Lecture Series featuring Taisu Zhang: The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation: Belief Systems, Politics, and Institutions
2022-11-03 16:00 - 17:30 | Room S030, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
read the transcript here

Speaker: Taisu Zhang, Professor of Law and History, Yale UniversityHow states develop the capacity to tax is a question of fundamental importance to political science, legal theory, economics, sociology, and history. Increasingly, scholars believe that China’s relative economic decline in the 18th and 19th centuries was related to its weak fiscal institutions and limited revenue. This book argues that this fiscal weakness was fundamentally ideological in nature. Belief systems created through a confluence of traditional political ethics and the trauma of dynastic change imposed unusually deep and powerful constraints on fiscal policymaking and institutions throughout the final 250 years of China’s imperial history. Through the Qing example, the book combs through several interaction dynamics between state institutions and ideologies. The latter shapes the former, but the former can also significantly reinforce the political durability of the latter, in the Qing case by artificially limiting the production of economic information that could have been used to challenge fiscal conservatism.

Taisu Zhang is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School and works on comparative legal and economic history, private law theory, and contemporary Chinese law and politics. His first book, The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property in Pre-Industrial China and England, was published by Cambridge University Press, and received the 2018 Presidents Award from the Social Science History Association and the 2018 Gaddis Smith Book Prize from the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. A second book, The Ideological Foundations of the Qing Fiscal State, is in progress. He has published articles and book chapters on a wide array of topics, winning awards from several academic organizations, and is a regular essayist on Chinese law, society, and politics in media outlets.

Zhang is a Global Faculty member at Peking University Law School and is the current president of the International Society for Chinese Law and History. He has also taught at the Duke University School of Law, the University of Hong Kong, Brown University, and the Tsinghua University School of Law. He holds a secondary appointment at Yale as Professor of History.Read the Transcript Here: Read Transcript

YouTube recording of “Modern China Lecture Series featuring Taisu Zhang: The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation: Belief Systems, Politics, and Institutions”

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Guido Goldman Lecture on Germany Featuring Constance Stelzenmüller - The Free World and Its Enemies: What Putin’s War and China’s Global Ambitions Mean For Us
2022-11-04 14:00 - 15:30 | Yenching Auditorium, 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Constanze Stelzenmüller, Director and Fritz Stern Chair, Center on the United States and Europe, The Brookings Institution

Russia is at war with Ukraine—but also with the West. Will Germany’s Zeitenwende reforms be enough to help protect Europe in an age of permanent disruption?

** Please note that seating for this event is limited. To register for this event, please RSVP here. **

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Karina Simonson - Representations of Africa and Asia in Soviet Lithuanian Children’s Visual Culture
2022-11-07 12:30 - 14:00 | CGIS South Room S354, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Karina Simonson, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies, Vilnius University, and Postdoctoral fellow at Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

In this presentation, Karina Simonson will provide an overview of her postdoctoral book project, starting with a daring initial research idea, discussing its aims and tasks, facing an unexpectedly vast amount of primary material, and dealing with the current political challenges of working with the Soviet period sources.

The project aims to conduct complex research on Soviet Lithuanian children’s visual culture, revealing the representations of African and Asian history, culture, and people, contextualizing them in related research of children’s literature, theatre, film, and music, linking with Soviet “fraternity of peoples” ideology and geopolitical interests, and offering possible hypotheses of the origins of present-day manifestations of racism. The research is developed at the intersection of ideologized Soviet children’s culture and postcolonial theory. The project aims to go beyond local research and interpret the formation of race representation in the international context, filling the gap in Lithuanian and East European research.Also streaming on YouTube.

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China Humanities Seminar Featuring Jeffrey Riegel - Further Reflections on an ‘Unmoved Heart’: Mengzi 2A2 Revisited
2022-11-07 16:00 - 18:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Jeffrey Riegel, University of California Berkeley, Emeritus

Mengzi 2A2 consists of Master Meng’s answers to questions put to him by a follower named Gongsun Chou. The first few of these replies relate to bu dong xin, “unmoved heart,”—i.e., mental quietude and equanimity in the face of humiliation or disappointment as well as excitement or promise—and to yang yong, “nurturing fortitude,” the first of several methods Mengzi identifies for achieving an “unmoved heart.” Mengzi attributes to his old rival, Gaozi, a sixteen-word “maxim” and adds to it a filigree of glosses and highly abbreviated explanations meant to justify why he labels the second part of Gaozi’s maxim an acceptable means for achieving an unmoved heart. In responding to subsequent questions, Mengzi introduces and explains yang haoran zhi qi, “nurturing the flood-like ethers,” and zhi yan, “recognizing (the defects in) words,” two pillars of his own self-cultivation method. Mengzi’s elaborations on how to cultivate the ethers show that he believed they would “fill the space between Heaven and Earth” because his passions dwelled together with propriety in a state of conjugal harmony.

I first presented a paper on Mengzi 2A2 at Harvard in the summer of 1976 and subsequently published it in 1980. The present paper is not simply a revision of that effort but rather a thorough reconsideration of its arguments and conclusions. The length of the passage, but even more so its obscure subject, technical vocabulary, rhetorical complexities, elliptical syntax, and resonances for those within the Ruist tradition account for Mengzi 2A2 having generated more discussion in the traditional exegeses and commentaries than other Mengzi passages. The earliest surviving commentary was composed by Zhao Qi (d. 201 CE). The most important of the lengthy treatments is the commentary of Zhu Xi (1130-1200), the Mengzi jizhu, first published in 1190, read together with the lessons on Mengzi 2A2 Zhu Xi provided his disciples and followers toward the end of his life that are preserved in the Zhuzi yulei.

The interpretations and other aspects of the approach to and reception of Mengzi 2A2 by Zhao Qi and Zhu Xi are major subjects of analysis treated in the present study. They are supplemented by consideration of the writings of late Ming and early Qing dynasty authorities, many of whom refute or criticize various points in Zhu Xi’s interpretations. Also important are the detailed lexical notes and other research materials compiled by Jiao Xun (1763-1820) in his Mengzi zhengyi, in a sense a capstone of the Qing dynasty philological approach to the text. Interwoven with the explanations of these earlier commentators are my own attempts to engage with Mengzi’s thought and the often-unique difficulties of understanding the terminology he used in formulating his answers to Gongsun Chou’s questions. While this involves applying the philological tools necessary to any reading of early Chinese literature, my purpose here is not so much to provide a close reading of Mengzi 2A2 but rather to create an interpretation of the text that will encourage readers to explore more deeply its difficulties and complexities. The last word on the text will never be written.

Jeffrey Riegel is retired from professorial positions at the University of California, Berkeley (1979-2007), and The University of Sydney (2007-2017). Jeff has published widely on early Chinese thought, literature, and archaeology, has been a visiting professor at Fudan University, Renmin University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and still occasionally gives talks in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Australia, and North America. Jeff’s publications include The Annals of Lü Buwei (Stanford, 2000) and Mozi: A Study and Translation of the Ethical and Political Writings (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2013). His articles appear in major sinological journals. A selection of them has been translated into Chinese and collected into a volume forthcoming in 2022 from Shanghai’s Guji Press. His recently-completed book-length study of eighteenth-century Chinese historiography on the rise of the Qin empire will be published by Berkeley’s IEAS in early 2023. Jeff spends most of his time at his homes in Siem Reap, Suzhou, and Palm Springs.Also presented via Zoom. Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAvdeisqzosE9I38t-pSbOjiucNf41cqdob

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Minhua Ling - Containerization of Migrant Housing on Shanghai's Edge
2022-11-07 20:30 - 22:00 | Presented via Zoom
zoom meeting link

Speaker: Minhua Ling, Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study

China’s escalated infrastructural and real estate development has gradually erased urban villages and reduced affordable living space for rural-to-urban migrants. This talk showcases the emerging practice of container housing among low-income migrants who live in removable cargo containers or prefabricated metal shelters on the urban fringe of Shanghai. Despite the neglected appearance of container housing, I argue that its existence and operation exemplify “formal informality” entailing the acquiescence and surveillance of local state agents as well as entrepreneurs’ tactics of conformation that sustains structural inequality. Container housing also contributes to the deterritorialization of homemaking among migrant workers, who are channeled by hukou-related policies to invest and retire in their registered home places. The containerization of migrant housing thus reinforces migrants’ socio-spatial precarity in China’s exclusive urban citizenship and place-specific property regime.

Minhua Ling is a sociocultural anthropologist with research interests in mobility, inequality, sustainability, rural-urban relations, and environmental humanities. Her single-authored articles appeared in international journals including China Quarterly, China Journal, Anthropological Quarterly, Urban Studies, positions: asia critique, and HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. Her monograph The Inconvenient Generation: Migrant Youth Coming of Age on Shanghai’s Edge (Stanford University Press, 2020) offers the first longitudinal study of second-generation rural-to-urban migrant youth navigating through middle school to labor and consumer markets. She taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2013-2022) and is currently a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (2022-23), after which she will join the Geneva Graduate Institute as Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology in the fall of 2023.Zoom link: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/96217779608

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Panel Discussion - China's New Politics: What have we learned from the 20th Party Congress
2022-11-08 17:30 - 19:00 | CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium (S010), 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Read the Transcript here

Speakers:Joseph Fewsmith, Professor of International Relations and Political Science, Boston University Pardee School of Global StudiesLucy Hornby, Visiting Scholar, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Former Beijing correspondent, Financial TimesAnthony Saich, Director of the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia and Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy SchoolYuhua Wang, Professor of Government, Harvard University

Moderator: Mark Wu, Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies; Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Read the Transcript Here: Read Transcript

YouTube recording of “Panel Discussion – China’s New Politics: What have we learned from the 20th Party Congress”

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Li Zhiying - Tibet as Told by the Early Qing Emperors
2022-11-09 11:00 - 12:30 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Li Zhiying, Associate Professor, Centre for Tibetan Studies, Sichuan University; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2022-23Chair/discussant: Leonard van der Kuijp, Professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, Harvard UniversitySeating is limited. Masks are required for all audience members.

How did the official narrative about the Qing-Tibetan relationship come into being? This talk focuses on the different narratives told in public by three successive emperors of the Qing dynasty, Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong. By focusing on the three central concepts in these narratives, i.e., “advancing the Gelugpa Teaching (興黃教/ doro šajin be badarambumbi/ bstan srid dar bar byed),” “the Great Patron (大施主/amba ūklige ejen/ sbyin bdag chen po),” and “the Great Emperor (大皇帝/amba ejen han/gong ma chen po),” I will explain how these three historical narratives were developed in their own contexts and how they served the early Qing emperors to establish a new narrative about Tibet area that was accepted by the Gelug pa tradition.

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Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Lingling Wei - How China's Private Business is Responding to Xi Jinping's State Capitalism
2022-11-09 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Lingling Wei, Senior China Correspondent, The Wall Street Journal

Lingling Wei is a senior China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. She covers China’s political economy, focusing on Beijing’s policy-making process and its key decision makers. Born and raised in China, she has a M.A. in journalism from N.Y.U. and got her start covering U.S. real estate and finance.This talk also available on Zoom. Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_EPEoToVgRkWo1GkYp86SOw.

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Chinese Kinesthetic Forms
2022-11-11 09:30 - 2022-11-12 17:00 | Sackler Building Auditorium, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Movement has a distinctively rich tradition in China. Chinese Kinesthetic Forms considers movement as an organizing principle across myriad media and cultural forms—from dance and music, to painting and calligraphy, to theater and martial arts. The conference explores how movement, as both expression and object of perception, opens experiential dimensions, even beyond the corporeal. Coinciding with the presentation of installations from CAMLab’s Cave Dance project, the conference joins fresh conversations on dance, kinesthetics, and China’s long history of performance, and it seeks to further understanding of movement as a way of defining experience.

This conference is organized by Harvard FAS CAMLab, with support from the Department of History of Art and Architecture.

Friday, November 11

9:30 AM Welcome RemarksDavid Roxburgh, Harvard University

9:45–10:30 AM Opening Remarks and Keynote Eugene Wang, Harvard University. “When and How Did Art Become Art? Crane Dances in Chinese Imagination”

11:00–12:30 PM The Lightness of Being: Sensorial KinestheticsPanel Chair: Alice Tseng, Boston UniversityChenchen Lü, Harvard University. “Flame and Fragrance: The Bodiless Body of Dancing Apsaras in Medieval Buddhist Art”Anne Feng, Boston University. “Taking Flight: The Modern Art of the Apsaras in East Asia”Panel Discussant: Shanti Pillai, Williams College

1:00–3:00 PM Sword Dance: Three Readings of Lady GongsunPanel Chair: Michael Szonyi, Harvard UniversityStephen Owen, Harvard University. “Where the Feet Touch the Ground”Xiaofei Tian, Harvard University. “The Phantom of the Dance”Lucas Bender, Yale University. “Sharp Turns, Indirect Transmission, and the Unity of the Arts”Panel Discussant: Wai-yee Li, Harvard University

3:30–5:00 PM Reviving Repertoire: Dunhuang Dance, Then and NowPanel Chair: Rowan Flad, Harvard UniversityMuyun Zhou, Pennsylvania State University. “How to Get From Dance Scores to Murals?: Bridging Representations of Tang Dance Events”Emily Wilcox, College of William & Mary. “From Wall to Stage: Flowers and Rain on the Silk Road (1979) and the Making of Contemporary Dunhuang Dance” Panel Discussant: Thomas Kelly, Harvard University

Saturday, November 129:00–11:00 AM Furor and Festivity: The Song-Yuan TurnPanel Chair: Leonard van der Kuijp, Harvard UniversityHuiping Pang, Hangzhou Normal University. “No More Fear: How Did the Southern Song Nuo Exorcists Cope with Pandemics?” Discussant: Heping Liu, Wellesley CollegeWen-chien Cheng, Royal Ontario Museum. “Tage (Stomping Songs): Images of Rural Festive Dancing in Chinese Paintings”Discussant: Heping Liu, Wellesley CollegeXiaotian Yin, Harvard University. “Demonic Divine: Reassessing ‘Dance of the Sixteen Heavenly Devils’ in the Mongol-Yuan Court”Discussant: Jinah Kim, Harvard University

11:00 AM–12:30 PM Calligraphic KinestheticsPanel Chair: Jeffrey Moser, Brown UniversityKathleen Ryor, Carleton College. “Martial Heroics in the Calligraphy and Painting of Xu Wei”Amy McNair, University of Kansas. “Like the Splash of a Great Whale Rising: Motion in the Criticism and Practice of ‘Mad Cursive’ Calligraphy”Panel Discussant: Aida Yuen Wong, Brandeis University

1:30–3:30 PM Kinesthetic MediaPanel Chair: Christina Yu Yu, Museum of Fine Arts, BostonJeehee Hong, McGill University. “Haptic Vision: Kinetic Architecture in Middle-Period China”Discussant: Aurelia Campbell, Boston CollegeCatherine Yeh, Boston University. “Dancing Pictures: Mei Lanfang’s ‘The Goddess Spreads Flowers’ and the Inherent Ambiguity of Modernism”Discussant: Eugene Wang, Harvard UniversityHu Ying, University of California, Irvine. “Recreating the Sword-dance, Reinventing Qiu Jin (1875–1907)” Discussant: Weihong Bao, University of California, Berkeley

4:00–5:00 PM From Immersion to Access: Lenora Lee Dance’s Filmic RemediationLenora Lee, Lenora Lee DanceSanSan Kwan, University of California, BerkeleyModerator: Simone Levine, Harvard FAS CAMLab

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Seung Wha Chang - An Arbitration Model for Resolving International Economic/Public Disputes: A (Korean) WTO Appeal Arbitrator's View
2022-11-11 12:15 - 13:15 | Morgan Courtroom, Austin Hall, 1515 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Seung Wha Chang, Chairman of Korea Trade Commission & Professor of Seoul National University

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Youqin Hang - Families in Transition: Living Arrangements, Intergenerational Support, and Subjective Wellbeing in 21st Century China
2022-11-14 20:30 - 22:00 | Presented via Zoom
Zoom meeting link

Speaker: Youqin Huang, Professor of Geography and Planning, Research Associate of the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis, University at Albany, State University of New YorkThis paper examines whether the Chinese family is undergoing a Western process of modernization and an associated reduction in previously very high rate of parent-adult child co-residence, and how this change in living arrangement affects subjective wellbeing. Using the China Household Finance Survey, this study reveals that only two decades into the 21st century, co-residence in China is as low as, if not lower than that in the West. Instead, living apart in proximity in the same city has replaced co-residence as the most prevalent living arrangement. This shift to proximity is a result of the negotiations between traditional and modernizing tendencies and is further enabled by significantly improved housing and household financial conditions. This is in contrast to an emerging trend of moving back to parents’ house in the West due to rising housing cost. Furthermore, living apart in proximity, together with strong inter-generational support, has a significant positive effect on subjective wellbeing. We conclude that even as China continues its progress in modernization and market transition, strong intergenerational connections based on Confucian values continue to persist, although with some modern twists, which promotes wellbeing.

Dr. Youqin Huang is a Professor of Geography and Planning and a Research Associate of the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis at University at Albany, State University of New York. Her research aims to understand the impact of major socioeconomic transformations and government policies, focusing on housing, migration, health, and wellbeing. She is the (co-)author/(co-)editor of ten books/edited volumes and has published papers in leading journals in geography, China, urban studies, and housing, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, The China Quarterly, Urban Studies, Housing Studies, as well as Environment and Planning A, and B.

Zoom meeting link: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/96217779608

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Taiwan Studies Workshop - Taiwan Elections 2022: The Politicians' Perspective
2022-11-15 08:00 - 09:30 | Presented via Zoom
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On November 26, Taiwan will be holding elections for nine local jurisdictions ranging from mayors of special municipalities such as Taipei to county magistrates down to the village chiefs. As the 2024 Presidential election approaches, this so-called “Nine in One Election” will be carefully watched for clues to the relative strength of Taiwan’s parties.

On November 15 and 17, the Fairbank Center’s Taiwan Studies Workshop will host two virtual seminars focused on the upcoming elections.

Panelists:Ambassador Leonard Chao, Chairman, International Affairs Committee, and Deputy Chairman, Policy Think Tank, Taiwan People’s PartyMark Chih-Wei Ho, Congressman, the Republic of China, member of the Standing Committee of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)Alfred Chia-hsing Lin, Deputy Director, Culture and Communications Committee and member of the Central Committee of the Kuomindang (KMT)Wan Yu Wang, Congresswoman, the Republic of China and member of the Central Decision Committee, New Power Party

Moderator: George Yin, Distinguished Research Fellow, Center for China Studies, National Taiwan University; Associate in Research, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University

Presented via Zoom. Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_q2IRMwrYST-lS7ei5mvtEQ.

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