Critical Issues Confronting China Series Featuring Lily Wu - The Crisis of China's Investment Environment
2020-09-16 12:30 - 13:45 (America/New_York)
Read the transcript for the event here.
Speaker: Lily Wu, Chief Investment Officer, China Prosper Group

In over 40 years of opening and reform (改革开放, foreign and domestic direct investment has been a critical economic growth driver, and change driver. However, both drivers face significant challenges today, which could limit their role or efficacy in the future. What is the state of China’s investment environment today, how did we get here, and what is the outlook?

Lily Wu is Chief Investment Officer Taiwan private equity investment company China Prosper Group. She has 30 years of investment research, and investment management experience in China, for various Taiwan investment companies and US brokerages Salomon Brothers and Bankers Trust. She graduated from Caltech with a BS in engineering, and attended Peking University for post-graduate work in history as a Thomas Watson Fellow in 1985.

Part of the Critical Issues Confronting China Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Olga Lomová - European Dream About Chinese Poetry in Sinological Research: The Cases of Vasiliv Alekseyev (1881–1951) and Jaroslav Průšek (1906–1980)
2020-09-21 12:00 - 14:00
Via Zoom Meeting
Speaker: Olga Lomová, Charles University in Prague
It is a well-known fact that since the late nineteenth century many Western modernists were fascinated by ancient Chinese poetry believed to be congenial to their new aesthetics. While Ezra Pound is a notorious example in the English-speaking world, Pauline Yu and others have also demonstrated the crucial role of a much lesser known French poet and translator Judith Gautier (1845-1917) in promoting her version of Chinese poetry around Europe. Early translations of Chinese poetry by Western poets were shaped rather by their own taste for literary experiment than by serious inquiry into the complexity of Chinese poetic art, and they are justly not included in the history of western sinology. However, there were also sinologists who did substantial pioneering research into the history of Chinese literature and whose interest in the subject was nevertheless driven by similar modernist sensibility. I will present two European scholars who were among the first to write about Chinese poetry in European scholarship, and discuss how the modernist aesthetics shaped their research. Using the cases of a Russian scholar V. Alexeyev, and a Czech Jaroslav Průšek, I will ask a question: how much preconceived notions about Chinese poetry inspired by earlier translations conditioned their understanding of Chinese literature, and to what extent they helped them arrive at a breakthrough in Chinese literature studies.
Olga Lomová is professor of Chinese literature at Charles University in Prague. Her research and teaching comprise Chinese poetry, literary aesthetics, and translation. She frames her research in questions of intellectual transformation in 20th century China, interplay of ideology and culture in the PRC, and history of sinological research in Europe with special focus on the Prague School. Currently she heads a research group on intercultural communication between East and West within a large transdisciplinary project KREAS at the Charles University Faculty of Arts.
Conducted via Zoom Meeting.
Registration Required.
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0sf-2qqj8qEt1suBi_342kgpb6delQCu5E

Opening Event, Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar in Book History
2020-09-21 17:00 - 18:30
Speakers:
Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University
Alex Csiszar, Harvard University
Kathryn James, Yale University
Presented via Zoom.
Registration Required
Register at https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEpf-mvqDsiGtAblBeWA3ymZhyloJtgcQs4

MODERN CHINA LECTURE SERIES FEATURING Sören Urbanksy - Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian border
2020-09-22 16:00 - 18:00
Read the transcript of the event here.
Speaker: Sören Urbanksy, Research Fellow, German Historical Institute Washington
The Sino-Russian border, once the world’s longest land border, was special in many ways. It not only divided the two largest Eurasian empires, it was also the place where European and Asian civilizations met, where nomads and sedentary people mingled, where the imperial interests of Russia and later the Soviet Union clashed with those of Qing and Republican China and Japan, and where the world’s two largest Communist regimes hailed their friendship and staged their enmity. In this talk, Sören Urbansky will discuss his recent book, Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian border, which examines the demarcation’s remarkable transformation—from a vaguely marked frontier in the seventeenth century to its twentieth-century incarnation as a tightly patrolled barrier girded by watchtowers, barbed wire, and border guards.
Part of the Modern China Lecture Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Confronting Disinformation: A Conversation with Audrey Tang
2020-09-22 19:30 - 20:30
Speaker: Audrey Tang, Taiwan Digital Minister in charge of Social Innovation
Moderator: Joan Donovan, Research Director, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard University
Audrey Tang is Taiwan’s Digital Minister in charge of Social Innovation. Audrey is known for revitalizing the computer languages Perl and Haskell, as well as building the online spreadsheet system EtherCalc in collaboration with Dan Bricklin. In the public sector, Audrey served on Taiwan national development council’s open data committee and K-12 curriculum committee; and led the country’s first e-Rulemaking project. In the private sector, Audrey worked as a consultant with Apple on computational linguistics, with Oxford University Press on crowd lexicography, and with Socialtext on social interaction design. In the social sector, Audrey actively contributes to g0v (“gov zero”), a vibrant community focusing on creating tools for the civil society, with the call to “fork the government.”
Dr. Joan Donovan is the Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Dr. Donovan leads the field in examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns. Dr. Donovan leads The Technology and Social Change Project (TaSC). TaSC explores how media manipulation is a means to control public conversation, derail democracy, and disrupt society. TaSC conducts research, develops methods, and facilitates workshops for journalists, policy makers, technologists, and civil society organizations on how to detect, document, and debunk media manipulation campaigns.
Registration for this event is required, details on how to join the webinar will be sent to registered participants before the event.
Register here.
This event is cosponsored by The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
Questions? Contact Allie Henske at allie_henske@hks.harvard.edu

East Asian Legal Studies Open House
2020-09-23 12:00 - 13:00
Please join East Asian Legal Studies to meet EALS faculty, staff, and scholars.
The Zoom link to this event will be published at: http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/eals/events.html

Critical Issues Confronting China Series Featuring Robert Ross - Rising China in Perspective: Global Threat or Great Power Competitor
2020-09-23 12:30 - 13:45
Read the transcript of the event here.
Speaker: Robert S. Ross, Professor of Political Science, Boston College; Fairbank Center Associate
Part of the Critical Issues Confronting China Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Digital China Series - Long Live the Digital Scholarship Project!
2020-09-25 10:00 - 11:15
Read the transcript for the event here.
Presenters:
Peter Bol, Harvard University, China Biographical Database
Grace Fong, McGill University, Ming-Qing Women’s Writings
Andrew Gordon, Harvard University, Japan Disasters Digital Archive Project
Helen Hardacre, Harvard University, Constitutional Revision Research Project
It is difficult to start a digital scholarship project. Maintaining it for decades is even more difficult. In this year’s first forum of the East Asian Digital Scholarship Series, we invite the founders of four long-running North American-based projects. Peter Bol, Grace Fong, Andrew Gordon, and Helen Hardacre will share their experiences in building and leading digital scholarship projects.
The East Asian Digital Scholarship Series, founded by Feng-en Tu and Sharon Yang, has been a monthly luncheon at Harvard-Yenching Library. This year, the Series will be conducted remotely and is sponsored by Harvard-Yenching Library with the support of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and Korea Institute. The Series will cover a wide range of topics in East Asian digital scholarship.
Part of the Digital China Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Ann Heirman - Protecting Insects in Medieval Chinese Buddhism: Daoxuan's Vinaya Commentaries
2020-09-28 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker: Ann Heirman, Ghent University
Buddhist texts generally prohibit the killing of all sentient beings. This is certainly the case in vinaya (disciplinary) texts, which contain strict guidelines on the preservation of all human and animal life. When these vinaya texts were translated into Chinese, they formed the core of Buddhist behavioural codes, influencing both monastic and lay followers. Chinese vinaya masters, such as Daoxuan 道宣 (596–667) and Yijing 義淨 (635–713), wrote extensive commentaries and accounts, introducing Indian concepts into the Chinese environment. In this lecture, we focus on an often neglected aspect of inflicting harm on sentient beings: namely, the injury that may be caused to some of the world’s smallest animals – insects. Some insects produce economically valuable products, such as silk and honey; others, such as mosquitoes and bedbugs, are annoying or dangerous; and still others are innocent victims of essential human activities, such as earthworms that are killed when farmland is tilled. Yet, all of these are sentient beings that – according to Buddhist principles – should not be harmed or killed. What this implies for Chinese vinaya masters, and especially the highly influential Daoxuan, is the core question of this lecture. As we will see, their responses are mixed, but they always attempt to remain true to the basic principles of Buddhism.Please contact coordinator Guttorm Gundersen for a link to the event: gundersen@g.harvard.edu

Jinying Li - Walled Media, Mediating Walls
2020-09-28 19:30 - 20:30
Speaker: Jinying Li, Brown University
As the global digital network promises boundless access to limitless information, we are facing increasing layers of mounting walls in digital media: the Great Firewall (GFW), the Facebook Walls, the virtual walls in virtual realities…. The existence of the walls shatters the myth of an infinitely open, borderless digital space, and highlights the significant functions of certain types of digital apparatus in managing, controlling, and mediating information, knowledge, and experience. A wall, in its graphic signification and structural function, is not only a boundary for demarcation but also a surface for expression. It is an object of both blockage and revelation. Drawing upon the “window” metaphor, I argue that it is the wall rather than the window that fundamentally structures and defines digital media. Shifting the metaphor from “window” to ”wall” is a theoretical reconsideration of modern media not simply as systems of visual representation but as spatial organization.
Jinying Li is Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she teaches media theory, animation, and digital culture in East Asia. Her essays have been published in Film International, Mechademia, the International Journal of Communication, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Asiascape, Asian Cinema, and Camera Obscura. She co-edited two special issues on Chinese animation for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and a special issue on regional platforms for Asiascape: Digital Asia. She recently completed her first book, Geek Pleasures: Anime, Otaku, and Cybernetic Affect and began her second book project, Walled Media and Mediating Walls. Jinying is also a filmmaker and has worked on animations, feature films, and documentaries. Two documentary TV series that she produced were broadcasted nationwide in China through Shanghai Media Group (SMG). She is one of the co-writers of animated feature film Big Fish and Begonia (Dayu Haitang, 2016)
The talk is part of the ongoing East Asian Media Ecologies lecture series. Following a ten-minute presentation by Professor Li are an extended conversation and Q&A with the moderators and attendees.
Made possible by the generous support of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.
Presented via Zoom.
Log on at: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/91095850811?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting password: [REDACTED]

Critical Issues Confronting China Series Featuring Jorge Heine - China and the Global South: From Debt Diplomacy to Dependency?
2020-09-30 12:30 - 13:45
Read the transcript of the event here.
Speaker: Jorge Heine, Research Professor, Boston University; Former Ambassador of Chile to China (2014-2017), to India (2003-2007) and to South Africa ( 994-1999), and Cabinet Minister in the Chilean Government
Part of the Critical Issues Confronting China Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Nicolas Tackett - The Mechanics of Cultural Change in China in a Period of Disunity
2020-10-05 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Nicolas Tackett, University of California Berkeley
Situated at the epicenter of the “Tang-Song Transition,” the tenth-century interregnum between the Tang and Song dynasties was a period of rapid change. This talk will focus on the dramatic evolution of Chinese political culture, as reflected in new political ideals, new ideas of Chinese space, and a new elite sense of identity. What underlying mechanisms account for these developments? Datasets and examples taken from an on-going book project suggest that cultural change was spurred by the particularities of the tenth century as a period of disunity. Although Chinese civilization has evolved continuously throughout its long history, change during periods of disunity was driven by distinct causative factors, which included political instability, inter-regime competition, elite migrations, not to mention the process of reunification itself.
Nicolas Tackett is Professor of History at U.C. Berkeley. He is the author of two books. The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy (2014) examines how a network of powerful families survived at the pinnacle of political power for centuries only to disappear into oblivion suddenly and completely at the turn of the 10th c. The Origins of the Chinese Nation (2017) argues that a national consciousness emerged in China in the eleventh century (i.e., much earlier than typically assumed), and explores how this new consciousness was a product of the diplomatic environment of 11th-c. Northeast Asia.
Presented via Zoom.
Registration required.
Register at https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIuf-uqrz8uGNdQbNpKcTEXXRzRvo5dR5Vb

Critical Issues Confronting China Series Featuring Rosemary Foot - China, the UN, and Human Protection: Beliefs, Power, Image
2020-10-07 12:30 - 13:45
Read the transcript of the event here.
Speaker: Rosemary Foot, Senior Research Fellow in International Relations at the University of Oxford; Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College; Research Associate of Oxford’s China Centre
Part of the Critical Issues Confronting China Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

COVID and Telemedicine: Experience from China, India, and the U.S.
2020-10-07 22:30 - 23:30
Panelists:
Hongqiao Fu, Assistant Professor in Health Economics and Policy in School of Public Health, Peking University
Ajay Nair, CEO, Swasth Digital Health Foundation
Atveev Mehrotra, Associate Professor of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School
Moderator: Winnie Chi-Man Yip, Professor of Global Health Policy and Economics, Harvard School of Public Health; Director, Harvard China Health Partnership; Interim Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
In many countries, telemedicine is playing an important role in COVID-19 pandemic response and may have an increased role in non-COVID-19 service delivery going forward. Join us for a discussion of telemedicine in the three largest countries of the world–China, India, and the United States. Panelists will discuss the policies around insurance coverage, pricing, and quality of telemedicine and the role that telemedicine may have in the regular health care delivery system for years to come.
Sponsored by Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Harvard China Health Partnership. Co-sponsored by the Mittal South Asia Institute and the Harvard University Asia Center. This panel discussion is presented as part of “24 Hours of Harvard,” a special feature of Worldwide Week at Harvard 2020.

This discussion will be streamed online at https://worldwide.harvard.edu/24hh-24-hours-harvard. No pre-registration is necessary.

Modern China Lecture Series Featuring Gina Anne Tam - Dialect and the Making of Modern China: From Republican Revolutionaries to Hong Kong Protesters
2020-10-13 16:00 - 18:00
Read the transcript for the event here.
Speaker: Gina Anne Tam, Assistant Professor of History, Trinity University
Taking aim at the conventional narrative that standard, national languages transform ‘peasants’ into citizens, this talk will trace the history of the Chinese nation and national identity on fangyan – languages like Shanghainese, Cantonese, and dozens of others that are categorically different from the Chinese national language, Mandarin. It shows how, on the one hand, linguists, policy-makers, bureaucrats and workaday educators framed fangyan as non-standard ‘variants’ of the Chinese language, subsidiary in symbolic importance to standard Mandarin. I simultaneously highlight, on the other hand, the 1920s folksong collectors, communist-period playwrights, contemporary hip-hop artists and popular protestors in Hong Kong who argued that fangyan were more authentic and representative of China’s national culture and its history. From the late Qing through the present, these intertwined visions of the Chinese nation – one spoken in one voice, one spoken in many – interacted and shaped one another, and in the process, shaped the basis for national identity itself.
Gina Anne Tam is an assistant professor of Chinese history at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2016, and her research and teaching focus on the construction of collective identity– national belonging, ethnicity and race– in modern China. In addition to her book Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960, she has also published peer-reviewed work in Twentieth-Century China, and has written about the relevance of her work to current events in Foreign Affairs, The Nation, and Dissent. Her new project will be a global history of Chinese restauranteurs and the making of pan-Asian cuisine in the twentieth century.
Part of the Modern China Lecture Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Critical Issues Confronting China Series Featuring Suisheng Zhao - China Re-examines Global Governance
2020-10-14 12:30 - 13:45
Read the transcript of the event here.
Speaker: Suisheng (Sam) Zhao, Professor and Executive Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
Part of the Critical Issues Confronting China Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Chinese Language Resources
2020-10-14 20:00 - 21:00
The Harvard-Yenching Library is offering online bibliographic orientation sessions via Zoom to introduce you to the most important resources in Chinese, Japanese and Korean language resources.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0pdO-grz4pG9ch-VhtIx9tM_Bncj7GvyLt
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Repatriation and Reintegration of ISIS Affiliates in Central Asia
2020-10-15 09:30 - 10:30
Speakers:
Vera Mironova, Writer; Center Associate, Davis Center
Farukh Chariyev, Project Component Manager, NGO “Barqaror Hayot”
Rustam Azizi, Deputy Director, Center for Islamic Studies under the President of the Republic of Tajikistan
Moderator: Nargis Kassenova, Senior Fellow, Program on Central Asia, Davis Center
Around 5,000-10,000 individuals from post-Soviet Eurasia traveled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS and other armed groups fighting there between 2012 and 2019. Now, some of them are repatriated to their home countries, while many remain in prisons and detention camps in the Middle East. What will happen to ISIS affiliates returning to Central Asia? Will they be prosecuted or released once repatriated? And how can governments ensure their integration in the civilian society back home? The roundtable will address these questions and offer policy recommendations.

Watch live on YouTube.

More info: https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/events/repatriation-and-reintegration-isis-affiliates-central-asia.

Sonam Kachru - The Questions of Milinda: How To Use a Philosophical Classic and (perhaps) find a Literary Gem.
2020-10-19 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker: Sonam Kachru, University of Virginia
My goal is practical—How shall an intelligent reader make use of the remarkable though forbidding work, The Questions of Milinda (Milindapañha)? The Pāli work can seem discouragingly heterogenous. My guide is intended to overcome that, seeking to facilitate productive (and even potentially transformative) encounters with the text. It is divided into two parts, each part emphasizing distinct ways of approaching (sometimes overlapping parts of) the work. In Part One we will consider how to think about two features that are said to make the discourse (kathā) of Nāgasena aesthetically captivating (citra), the use of illustrative examples and arguments. In Part Two, we shall explore a small section of the work which constitutes a complete dramatic unit, so to speak, and one which is worthy of being taken up “as a work of art,” to borrow T. W. Rhys Davids’ characterization. As I read it, the text contains a drama concerned with the nature, salience and even tragedy of thought. I conclude with a discussion of the text’s own meta-poetic suggestions for readers and the practice of wise reasoning as a way of reading and a way of life.
Presented via Zoom.
Registration Required.
Register here: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAlfuqsqD8jHNWLB7LYEyAB7Vw4IarTG2JH

Bruce Rusk - Information and Its Objects: Provenancing the Censers of the Xuande Court
2020-10-19 20:00 - 22:00
Speaker: Bruce Rusk, University of British Columbia

This presentation examines the textual existence of material objects in early modern China, arguing that a new concept of the archive refigured the relationship between document and thing. The use of textual sources to understand the material culture of the past of course had a long history, particularly in antiquarian studies; writing about ancient objects had an equally long pedigree. By the early eighteenth century, however, some writers grounded claims about artifacts in a new vision of textual sources as documents drawn from an archive. The model of the state archive (dang’an 檔案/dangzi 檔子, Manchu dangse), a vital tool of governance in the Qing, may have shaped the use of documents in other epistemic domains. I examine the case of the Xuande lu 宣德爐, copper-alloy incense burners attributed to the early-Ming court, and the various “registers” (pu 譜) that describe them and their provenance. These texts were crafted to support of tenuous claims, since both the books and the artifacts whose history they provide are forgeries. Borrowing the concept of “documentality” from library studies, I show how relations of documentation between artifact as document and document as object create a network of epistemological connections that establish meaning and value in the world.
Bruce Rusk (PhD History, UCLA, 2004) is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia. He studies the cultural history of early modern China (14th to 18th centuries), focusing on cultural practices of authentication and deception, on the history of philology, and cultural uses of writing and books. He has published a monograph on the history of classical scholarship (Critics and Commentators: The Book of Poems as Classic and Literature, Harvard Asia Center, 2012) and a co-translation of a short story collection (Zhang Yingyu, The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection, with Christopher Rea, Columbia UP, 2017); is a co-editor of the forthcoming Literary Information in China: A History (with Jack Chen, Anatoly Detwyler, Liu Xiao, and Christopher Nugent; Columbia UP, 2021). He is currently writing a study of material and textual forgery in early modern and modern China.

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0rde2hpjIpG9xhdYG4cfxKe9yowMMQNvme

Deng Yanhua - Value Clashes, Power Competition and Community Trust: Why an NGO’s Earthquake Recovery Program Faltered in Rural China
2020-10-21 09:00 - 10:30
Speaker: Deng Yanhua, Professor, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2020-21
Chair/discussant: Anthony Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
NGOs in rural China cannot operate successfully and achieve their goals if they lose the trust of the people they aim to serve and the grassroots leaders they must work with. Following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, an environmental NGO in P village became entangled in competition with village cadres and value clashes with villagers who had their own understanding of development, sustainability and environmentalism. Initially, “borrowed power” from higher-level governments enabled the ENGO to enter the community fairly smoothly and to gain a degree of trust, but disputes with villagers (over home construction, organic agriculture and eco-tourism) and a power struggle with local cadres (over their role in the village) triggered resistance that ultimately drove the ENGO out. The story of P village is a cautionary tale about power relationships and community micropolitics. “Borrowed power” from above is no match for opposition from below on two fronts. Sadly, however, “success” in expelling the ENGO has not meant success more broadly. P village’s economic performance remains weak and old divisions between the powerful and powerless have re-emerged, as lack of trust in outsiders has been replaced with a lack of trust in insiders.
Presented via Zoom
Registration Required
Register at: https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2cmQYapggeGGx3D
https://harvard-yenching.org/events/value-clashes-power-competition-and-community-trust-why-ngo-s-earthquake-recovery-program

Critical Issues Confronting China Series Featuring Wang Gungwu - How Political Heritage and Future Progress Shape the China Challenge
2020-10-21 20:00 - 21:15
Read the transcript of the event here.
Speaker: Wang Gungwu, University Professor, National University of Singapore
Wang Gungwu is University Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore (NUS) since 2007, and Emeritus Professor of Australian National University since 1988. He is Foreign Honorary Member of the History Division of the American Academy of Arts and Science and former President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
He received his BA and MA from University of Malaya (UM) in Singapore, and PhD at SOAS, London. His early teaching career was in the UM History Department at Singapore and then at Kuala Lumpur, and held the History Chair at UM in KL (1963-1968). He was then appointed to the Chair of Far Eastern History at The Australian National University (1968-1986). From 1986 to 1995, he was Vice-Chancellor (President) of The University of Hong Kong. In Singapore, he was Director of the East Asian Institute till 2007.
His books include The Nanhai Trade: The Early History of Chinese Trade in the South China Sea. New Edition (1998); The Chinese Overseas: From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy (2000); Anglo-Chinese Encounters since 1800: war, trade, science and governance (2003); Divided China: Preparing for reunification, 883-947 (2007); Renewal: The Chinese State and the New Global History (2013); and Another China Cycle: Committing to Reform (2014).
Part of the Critical Issues Confronting China Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Lyle Goldstein and Vitaly Kozyrev — From a ‘Marriage of Convenience’ to the ‘Axis of Authoritarianism’: Evaluating the Russia-China Relationship in the 21st Century
2020-10-22 12:30 - 13:30
Speakers:
Lyle Goldstein, Research Professor, China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI), Naval War College
Vitaly Kozyrev, Professor, Political Science and International Studies, Endicott College

Watch live on YouTube.

Examining contemporary Russia-China relations, assessments by Western scholars yield a wide variety of perspectives and conclusions. Some view the relationship as inherently brittle, lacking in genuine substance and shot through with historical mistrust. At the other end of the spectrum, some hold that the relationship represents the most ominous possible threat to Western-style democracies. This presentation will summarize and attempt to categorize these wide-ranging conclusions, demonstrating that realists, liberals and constructivists have all developed distinct interpretations of the Russia-China relationship and its meaning for global security. Employing a case study approach, this research makes detailed probes into Russia-China cooperation in five specific domains, including Central Asia, the Korean Peninsula, the Arctic, the Middle East, and in the military domain more generally. These case studies offer preliminary conclusions for a larger book-length study that aims to be one of the first truly comprehensive studies of this complex and consequential bilateral relationship. Results to date illustrate a path between the two analytical extremes. The relationship has already produced some very significant results in the given case studies. On the other hand, the threat of further developing Russia-China relations should not be exaggerated, even as the subject demands increased scholarly attention.
More info: https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/events/%E2%80%98marriage-convenience%E2%80%99-%E2%80%98axis-authoritarianism%E2%80%99-evaluating-russia-china-relationship-21st

Environment in Asia Lecture Series Featuring David Fedman and Ian M. Miller - East Asian Forestry and Empires
2020-10-23 12:00 - 13:30
Read the transcript of the event here.

Speakers:
David Fedman, Assistant Professor of History,University of California, Irvine
Ian M. Miller, Assistant Professor of History, St. John’s University
Moderator: Ling Zhang, Boston College

David Fedman is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea (University of Washington Press, 2020). His other publications include “The Ondol Problem and the Politics of Forest Conservation in Colonial Korea” (Journal of Korean Studies, Vol. 23, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 Joel A. Tarr Envirotech Article Prize.
Ian M. Miller is Assistant Professor of History at St. John’s University in New York. He is the author of Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China (University of Washington Press, 2020). His current research is on the role of lineage organizations in regulating village environments, provisionally titled Ancestral Shade: Kinship and Ecology in South China.
Part of the Environment in Asia Lecture Series
Presented Via Zoom Webinar

Left-Wing South
2020-10-24 09:00 - 11:00
Co-hosts:
David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University
Letty Chen, Washington University in St. Louis
Special Guests:
Wang Anyi, Fudan University
Ng Kim Chew, National Chi Nan University
Presenters:
Tu Hang, Harvard University
Jessica Tan, Harvard University
Kang Ling, Fudan University
Nicholas Wong, Hong Kong University
Po-hsi Chen, Yale University
Chung Chih-wei, National Taiwan University
Join us for an online workshop on the rich legacies of left-wing thoughts and practices in the Sinophone South (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, etc.). Young scholars from across the world will present on their most recent research, and two renowned writers—Wang Anyi and Ng Kim Chew—will join our discussion. The workshop will be held in Chinese.
The workshop is sponsored by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.
Registration required: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0oduiqpzgpH920iAXTi-t1N3OAYMIOblc0

Modern China Lecture Series Featuring Fei-Hsien Wang - Everybody Loves Qianlong: Vernacular Fantasies, Cultural Consumption, and the “Prosperous Age” in Post-Imperial China
2020-10-27 16:00 - 18:00
Read the transcript of the event here.
Speaker: Fei-Hsien Wang, Associate Professor, Department of History, Indiana University Bloomington
Examining a wide range of cultural products and genres from the late nineteenth century to the present, this talk traces the evolution of the vernacular myths and popular fantasies about Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799). As China’s cultural economy and political climate transforms overtime, new stories and myths about Qianlong emerge to satisfy the changing desires of the audience as well as the political authorities. These popular cultural products have gradually shaped a common historical memory that takes the place of Qing “history” in most (Han) Chinese audience’s minds, despite generations of specialists’ effort to debunk it. The voracious fascination with this most accomplished Manchu emperor, however, has been an uneasy one. At the core of the vernacular fantasies of Qianlong lies the unsolved tension between the modern Han/Chinese nationalism and the legacy of a non-Han “prosperous age” (shengshi). The unofficial endorsement by the PRC leaders of using High Qing to talk about a great China further prolongs the career of the vernacular Qianlong.
Fei-Hsien Wang is a historian of modern China, with a particular interest in how information, ideas, and practices were produced, transmitted, and consumed across different societies in East Asia. Fei-Hsien Wang’s research has revolved around the relations between knowledge, commerce, and political authority after 1800.
Co-sponsored by the Joint Center for History and Economics.
Part of the Modern China Lecture Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Arnika Fuhrmann - In the Mood for Texture: Bangkok as a Chinese City
2020-10-28 10:00 - 11:00
Speaker: Arnika Fuhrmann, Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University.
What does it mean to imagine “Asia” beyond the reductive visions of contemporary policy? This project explores the contemporary visual culture of Chinese pasts and colonial modernities, revived across the cinemas, new media, hospitality venues, and other material sites of East and Southeast Asia. Examining the doubling of Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Shanghai across these sites, it investigates how a transregional Chinese modernity that emerged under, but always exceeded, conditions of colonial and national governance informs the present. As film directors such as Wong Kar-wai and hotels, bars, and clubs revive 1930s Shanghai and 1960s Hong Kong modernities—and exploit the Chinese past of Bangkok’s old European trading quarters—this redeployment of (semi-)colonial histories and Chinese urban pasts is emerging as a primary signifier of the good life and understandings of Asia in the present. The deployment of this twentieth century translocal Chinese modernity points to enduring regional imaginaries that diverge from global notions of “China Rising,” the People’s Republic’s own Belt and Road Initiative, or the policies of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations. Bangkok—as a Chinese city—stands at the center of these prominent, transregional revivals in which media and urban design projects speak of radically different desires than those of current policy.
Arnika Fuhrmann is an Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University. Her work on contexts in Southeast Asia is informed by affect, gender, urban and media theory. Her book Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema (Duke University Press, 2016) examines how Buddhist-coded anachronisms of haunting figure struggles over sexuality, personhood, and notions of collectivity in contemporary Thai cinema and political rhetoric. She is currently working on a project called Digital Futures: South/east Asian Media Temporalities and the Expansion of the Sphere of Politics.
The talk is part of the ongoing East Asian Media Ecologies lecture series. Following a ten-minute presentation by Professor Fuhrmann are an extended conversation with the moderators and a Q&A with the attendees.
A zoom link will be posted closer to the event.

Daniel S. Markey and Andrew Small — China’s Western Horizon: Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia
2020-10-28 10:00 - 11:00
Speakers:
Daniel S. Markey, Senior Research Professor, International Relations, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), John Hopkins University
Andrew Small, Senior Transatlantic Fellow, Asia Program, The German Marshall Fund of the United States
Moderator: Nargis Kassenova, Senior Fellow, Program on Central Asia, Davis Center; Associate Professor, KIMEP University

Watch live on YouTube.

Under the ambitious leadership of President Xi Jinping, China is transforming its wealth and economic power into potent tools of global political influence. But its foreign policy initiatives, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, are shaped and redefined as they confront the ground realities of local and regional politics outside China. Daniel S. Markey, in his new book China’s Western Horizon, describes and analyzes these complex processes in South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Drawing from extensive interviews, travels, and historical research, he provides the in-depth studies of the dynamics that China’s involvement in Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Iran has created. Markey anticipates that China’s expanding influence will not bring greater stability and peace to this difficult part of the world, and might exacerbate conflicts within and among Eurasian states. He argues that U.S. policy makers should have a clear grasp of local histories, interests and relationships to effectively advance America’s specific diplomatic, economic, and security interests in Eurasia, whether in common cause with Beijing or when working at cross purposes. At this event, Daniel S. Markey will present some of the key arguments of his book. Andrew Small will discuss the book and provide an overview of the European perspectives on China’s engagement in Eurasia. Policy options for U.S. and European policy makers will be explored.
More info: https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/events/china%E2%80%99s-western-horizon-beijing-and-new-geopolitics-eurasia

Critical Issues Confronting China Series Featuring William Overholt - The Logic & Illogic of China-US Decoupling
2020-10-28 12:30 - 13:45
Read the transcript of the event here.
Speaker: William Overholt, Senior Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
Part of the Critical Issues Confronting China Series
Presented via Zoom Webinar

Hsiang-an Wang - The Academia Sinica Digital Humanities Research Platform
2020-10-29 20:30 - 21:30
Speaker: Hsiang-an Wang, Academia Sinica Center for Digital Cultures
Launched in October 2018, the Academia Sinica Digital Humanities Research Platform (https://idh.ascdc.sinica.edu.tw/member/) is an one-stop platform of source materials, digital tools, and collaboration that enables big data analysis for innovative research. Combining open access and crowd collaboration, it enables search, keyword tagging, statistical analysis, text comparison, etc. for over 47,000 Chinese digital texts (~7.6 billion words) from Academia Sinica, Kyoto University, and more. The English version of the platform was added in 2020, allowing big data analysis of English texts. In the October webinar of the East Asian Digital Scholarship series, Dr. Wang Hsiang-an will introduce the platform to us.
The East Asian Digital Scholarship Series, founded by Feng-en Tu and Sharon Yang, has been a monthly luncheon at Harvard-Yenching Library. This year, the Series will be conducted remotely and is sponsored by Harvard-Yenching Library with the support of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and Korea Institute. The Series will cover a wide range of topics in East Asian digital scholarship.
Presented via Zoom.
Registration Required
Register at https://link.ws/eads-oct20.
The presentation will not be recorded.
