Critical Issues Confronting China featuring Ji Li - How Rising Geopolitical Tensions are Impacting Chinese Firms Overseas
2024-02-07 12:00 - 13:15 (America/New_York) | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Ji Li, John & Marilyn Long Professor of US-China Business and Law, University of California – Irvine

Rising geopolitical tensions have significantly amplified the risk of international trade and investment for Chinese firms. How do they cope with it? What is the role of law? How do their coping strategies implicate US-China relations? These important questions have received little academic attention. To narrow the gap, Ji Li conducted multi-year surveys of Chinese companies operating in the US, about 180 interviews with business and legal professionals, and archival research involving numerous legal documents. The study found a theoretically and empirically nuanced picture featuring firm-level variations based on multiple factors such as ownership structure and cultural differences. Notably, the coping strategies, especially legal strategies, adopted by Chinese firms have lasting impacts on both US law and US-China relations.

Professor Li joined UCI Law in July 2019 as the John S. and Marilyn Long Professor of U.S.-China Business and Law. Prior to the appointment, he was Professor of Law and Zhuang Zhou scholar at Rutgers University and a member of the Associate Faculty of the Division of Global Affairs.

Professor Li received a Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University and a J.D. from Yale Law School where he was an Olin Fellow in Law, Economics and Public Policy. After law school, he practiced corporate and tax law for several years in the New York office of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP.

Professor Li’s teaching and scholarship explores a broad range of topics including Chinese law and politics, international business transactions, contracts, comparative law, and empirical legal studies.

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Mingwei Song - Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction
2024-02-07 20:00 - 21:30 | Presented via Zoom
Digital China

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Speaker: Mingwei Song, Wellesley College

Special Guests:Mu Ming, Science Fiction WriterYan Feng, Fudan University

Cohosts:David Der-wei Wang, Harvard UniversityJie Li, Harvard Univeristy

Presented via Zoom. Register: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5kFBIXkeQdSBPFNyJkoEAg#/registration

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Craig Allen - China’s Economic Development Model: Implications for US-Japan Relations
2024-02-12 12:00 - 13:00 | CGIS Knafel K262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Craig Allen, President, US-China Business CouncilModerator: Christina L. Davis, Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations; Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, Department of Government, Harvard University

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The China Challenge and America's Future
2024-02-12 18:00 - 20:00 | JFK Jr. Forum, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 John F. Kennedy St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Join us for a special conversation with Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. This conversation will be moderated by former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Douglas Dillon Professor of Government Graham Allison, and Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Meghan O’Sullivan.

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Jiajun Zou - Is Examination Success the Result of Geographical Luck? New Ming Provincial Examination Dataset and Its Macro Social and Historical Implications
2024-02-13 15:30 - 17:30 | CGIS South Room S250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Jiajun Zou, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Emory University

Jiajun Zou introduces a fresh perspective to Ming dynasty studies with his pioneering dataset of 92,000 juren profiles. In his presentation, Zou will share his journey in assembling this comprehensive dataset, utilizing a mix of CBDB resources, computational techniques, and prompt engineering via ChatGPT. He will then present statistical and macro-level evidence of a geographical bias within the examination system, underscoring how proximity to examination centers at both the provincial and national levels significantly impacted odds of success. Zou contends that the examination system displayed a clear proximity bias, favoring those closer to central hubs in terms of outlasting and exhausting their group competitors over time. The challenges faced by peripheral prefectures and regions are attributed not to a lack of talent—as some of the most distant prefectures produced the highest number of juren in China but only a handful of jinshi. Moving beyond the narratives of educational and intellectual traditions, Zou explores whether rising costs of competition, influenced by geographical and social dynamics, shifted the balance of political power in Ming China. This presentation aims to highlight the value of a macro analytical approach using a large dataset to reveal hidden trends and to encourage modern scholars to independently tackle research challenges with innovative digital techniques.

Also via Zoom. Reigster: https://bit.ly/exam-luck

An event sponsored by China Biographical Database Project (CBDB) and Digital China Initiative (DCI), Harvard University

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Critical Issues Confronting China featuring Meg Rithmire - Can the Chinese Financial System be Effective?
2024-02-14 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Meg Rithmire, F. Warren McFarlan Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business SchoolModerator: Daniel Koss, Associate Senior Lecturer on East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

The last 25 years have been turbulent ones for the PRC’s financial system. Efforts at liberalization in the early 2000s accelerated early in Xi Jinping’s tenure, only to be met with a stock market crisis in 2015, a crackdown on official and private sector market participants, and then a serious reconfiguration of financial system governance. Now China appears on the verge of another stock market crisis. To transition from export and investment-driven growth to domestic consumption and innovation requires a modern financial system, but modern financial systems do not tend to thrive under authoritarian rule. Is it possible for the CCP to develop deep financial markets? What do financial developments in China mean for its growth trajectory and its role as international financier?

Meg Rithmire (任美格) is an associate professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit, where she teaches the course of the same name in the MBA required curriculum. Professor Rithmire holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, and her primary expertise is in the comparative political economy of development with a focus on China. Her first book, Land Bargains and Chinese Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2015), examines the role of land politics, urban governments, and local property rights regimes in the Chinese economic reforms. A new project investigates the influence of diasporas, and the overseas Chinese communities in particular, in the progress of economic and political reforms in the homeland. She is a faculty associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard. In 2015, she won the Faculty Teaching Award in the Required Curriculum at Harvard Business School.

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Harvard East Asia Society Conference 2024 - Knots: Complex Legacies and Imagined Futures of East Asia
2024-02-16 12:00 - 2024-02-17 17:00 | CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium (S010), 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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The Harvard East Asia Society (HEAS) Graduate Student Conference is an annual event which provides an interdisciplinary forum for graduate students to exchange ideas and discuss current research on topics related to Asia. The conference allows young scholars to present their research to both their peers and to renowned scholars in relevant fields. All panels will be moderated by Harvard University faculty. The conference will also allow participants to meet others in their research area conducting similar research and to forge new professional relationships.The theme of this year’s conference is: Knots: Complex Legacies and Imagined Futures of East Asia. The knot is a traditional form of art that can be found throughout China, Korea, and Japan, made from the orderly connection of different individual threads. The committee chose the figure of the knot to represent the intertwined memories, legacies, and histories of interaction between and throughout the different parts of the region we now call East Asia. We thus welcomed scholarship that attempts to bridge different spaces, times, and disciplines, which includes (but is not limited to) history, philosophy, religion, literature, art history, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, economics, political science, gender studies, environmental studies, and law. Please find the conference schedule and booklet here.

For detailed information, visit: https://linktr.ee/harvard_heas

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Transport and Communication in Late Imperial China: Routes and Costs
2024-02-20 15:30 - 17:00 | CGIS South, Room S001, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Ruoran Cheng, Ph.D. candidate at the London School of Economics.

Ruoran Cheng will introduce his work on transport routes and costs in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Using techniques from geographic information science and data from historical route books, he has proposed a more accurate and comprehensive account of transport routes. Based on this and other data he has constructed the relative costs of different modes of transportation from 1202 to 1890. Currently, he is also working on the connection between trade potential proxied by natural routes and the location of economic activities proxied by archeological sites in China for a period spanning from Neolithic villages (7000 BP) to the unified empire (2000 BP)

Sponsored by the China Biographical Database Project, China Historical GIS, and the Digital China Initiative

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Special Presentation - China-Russia Relations Two Years into Putin’s Ukraine War: How Strong, For How Long?
2024-02-20 17:15 - 18:30 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speakers:Andrew S. Erickson, Professor of Strategy, U.S. Naval War College (NWC) China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI); Visiting Professor, Government Department, Harvard University; Associate in Research, Fairbank Center for Chinese StudiesJulia Famularo, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Fairbank Center for Chinese StudiesVitaly Kozyrev, Distinguished Professor of Political Science & International Studies, Endicott CollegeAlexandra Vacroux, Executive Director, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard UniversityModerator: Mark Wu, Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

This event is co-sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University.

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Urban China Lecture Series featuring Shaun SK Teo - Two Experiments in Theorizing (with) Urban China
2024-02-20 20:30 - 22:00 | Presented via Zoom
Zoom meeting link

Speaker: Shaun SK Teo, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

Is Chinese urbanization unique? What can we learn from Chinese urbanization? How might cases in urban China be integrated into global discussions on urban governance and transformation? This talk addresses these burning questions. Chinese urbanization presents rich cases for an engaged pluralism in urban studies. It has the potential to contribute to the revision of existing theoretical frameworks and to create new starting points for analysis between urban China and a wider range of contexts globally. These arguments are instantiated through two experiments to build concepts from and with a case study of a collaborative urban redevelopment project in Shenzhen. The first experiment is a comparative analysis between Shenzhen and a similar case in London. The second experiment builds elements for the re-theorization of Chinese state entrepreneurialism by conceptualizing from the ground in Shenzhen. Both experiments contribute to studies of urban governance by demonstrating the variegated logics and forms of emerging post-growth state programs and politics, including those which allow parts of society to selectively influence policymaking.

Shaun SK Teo is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. His research focuses on urban governance and its underpinning state-society politics, theorizing from a ‘global East’ perspective. Ongoing research topics include municipal statecraft, gentrification and informality. Shaun’s current research is a comparative analysis of the geographies of youth urban activisms in Taipei, and Bangkok and Singapore, thinking specifically about how we can rethink urban activisms through the variegated practices of youth

Zoom Meeting Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/92743598127

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Sophie Ling-chia Wei - A Sage Embellished with Elements of “Chinoiserie”: The Making of Jesus in the Jesuit Figurist Translations of Chinese Classics
2024-02-23 11:30 - 13:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Sophie Ling-chia Wei, Associate Professor, Department of Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2023-24Chair/Discussant: James Robson, James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

When Christianity was introduced to China in the Ming and Qing dynasties, translations of sacred texts and stories of biblical figures were employed for the purpose of proselytization. The Jesuit Figurists’ translations took on lives of their own, going on to create impact through new and interesting parallels between Chinese mythological figures and the image of Jesus Christ. The making of Jesus in the hands of the Jesuit Figurists revealed their intention of establishing a communal space between Christianity and Chinese history and culture.

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Generative AI for Chinese Studies - Introductory Workshop
2024-02-23 15:00 - 16:30 | CGIS Knafel K262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Digital China Initiative is organizing two workshops on how to apply generative AI for Chinese studies. The first workshop, on 23 Feb 2024, will introduce basic GenAI concepts, writing prompts, and examples of domain-specific tasks (language learning, data extraction, etc.). The second workshop, on 5 April, will cover how to use open-source large language models on local devices, query through APIs, and basic concepts of retrieval augment generation.

The workshops will be limited to 45 attendees each to ensure enough space and a quality learning environment. The following order of preference will apply: graduate students and faculty, undergraduate students, and Harvard affiliates.

In the introductory workshop, we will work with the AI Sandbox created by HUIT and other commercial tools like Microsoft Copilot. Attendees should have a laptop that can access these services with them.

In the advanced workshop, we will try out open-source large language models such as Qwen and Taiwan LLM. We will show how to access them through APIs. The workshop also covers an overview of retrieval augment generation that can offer more precise and domain-specific information. For these tasks, attendees may need a laptop with 16GB of ram and at least 10 GB of SSD storage. They also have to install some software before attending the workshop. More information will be provided after enrollment confirmation.Registration:Introductory workshop: https://forms.office.com/r/AgLqaMvUk9Advanced workshop: https://forms.office.com/r/N9eRjE0RUL

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China Humanities Seminar featuring Michelle Wang - Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China
2024-02-26 16:00 - 17:30 | CGIS South, Room S050, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Michelle H. Wang, Associate Professor of Art History and Humanities, Reed College

In The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Michelle H. Wang explores the diagrammatic tradition of rendering space in early China. The book centers on maps (ditu) excavated from three tombs that date from the fourth to the second century BCE and constitute the entire known corpus of early Chinese maps. Unlike extant studies that draw heavily from the history of cartography, the book offers an interdisciplinary account of the diversity of forms and functions in early Chinese ditu to argue that these pictures did not simply represent natural topography and built environments but rather made and remade worlds for the living and the dead. In this talk, Wang will provide an overview of the leading questions and methods that underpin the project, a case study that exemplifies their application, and a proposal for future lines of inquiry.

Michelle H. Wang is Associate Professor of Art History and Humanities at Reed College. She specializes in art and archaeology of tenth century BCE to third century CE China, with an emphasis on early notational systems. Her research interests include artisanal practice, history of technology, excavated texts, and mortuary culture. Her work has appeared in journals such as Artibus Asiae and Art History.

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Special Presentation featuring Christopher Rea - From Zhuangzi’s Gourd to Cinderella’s Pumpkin: Gua 瓜 as a Vehicle for the Imagination
2024-02-27 17:00 - 18:15 | CGIS South Room S250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Christopher Rea, Professor of Chinese, Former Director of the Centre for Chinese Research, University of British ColumbiaModerator: David Der-wei Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature, Harvard University

The Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi tells us that one remedy for a lack of imagination is to take your gourd for a ride. Confucius makes a point about usefulness by comparing himself to a gourd (or is it a melon?). Gua 瓜 (cucurbits)—which include gourds, melons, pumpkins, squash, and bitter melon—abound in Chinese philosophy, art, poetry, historiography, and storytelling, notably in late imperial novels such as Jin Ping Mei, Journey to the West, and Story of the Stone. Why? Christopher Rea argues that gua have several qualities that account for their enduring popularity in the figurative imagination, including their sound, shape, seasonality, variety, and abundance.

This talk shares examples of how the cucurbitaceae—a vast family that is as diverse in its metaphorical usages as in its species—has been used in Chinese and other contexts as a vehicle for the imagination. The humble gua 瓜 has been used to represent ideas of consequence, both physical—human anatomy, China, the earth—and conceptual—moral peril, wealth, glory days. Gua are a vehicle for rethinking the taxonomies that drive cultural historiography, the distinctions scholars make between here and there, this and that. In particular, this talk will focus on why gua associations tend to be overripe, and on how Chinese (and non-Chinese) sources have used melons and their kin to represent time itself.

Christopher Rea is Professor of Chinese and former Director of the Centre for Chinese Research at the University of British Columbia. He is the creator of the Chinese Film Classics Project, whose website ChineseFilmClassics.org hosts the world’s largest online collection of early Chinese films with English subtitles, as well as film clips, essays, links, and an online course on early Chinese films. The websiteand the course are companions to his book Chinese Film Classics, 1922-1949 (Columbia, 2021), which has a Chinese edition forthcoming. Rea is also the author of the Levenson Prize-winning The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (California, 2015; Rye Field, 2018) and the co-author of Where Research Begins: Choosing a Research Project That Matters to You (and the World) (with Thomas Mullaney; Chicago, 2022), which is also available in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Polish. He is currently working on a second volume of The Book of Swindles (Columbia, 2017) and on a cultural history of gua 瓜.

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Critical Issues Confronting China featuring Minxin Pei - Surveillance in a Leninist Party-State: Understanding China’s Preventive Repression
2024-02-28 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Minxin Pei, Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow, Claremont McKenna College

China’s surveillance state has attracted much attention in the media, but there is little serious research on its organization, scope, and operational tactics. Evidence gathered from hundreds of local yearbooks and police gazettes shows that the backbone of China’s surveillance state is an extensive network of informants and labor-intensive surveillance tactics which are made possible and run effectively by the Party’s Leninist organizational structure. The adoption of hi-tech surveillance came relatively late – probably around 2010. The Chinese Leninist party-state has the organizational capacity unmatched by other forms of dictatorship in building and maintaining an extensive and labor-intensive network of surveillance to implement preventive repression against potential threats. Hi-tech capabilities strengthen such surveillance, but do not and cannot substitute the underlying organizational structure.

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Daniel H. Rosen - Spillover Implications of a China Growing 0-2%
2024-02-29 12:00 - 13:15 | Wex-434ab Conference Room, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK St., Camrbidge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Daniel H. Rosen, Founding Partner, Rhodium Group

Educators, policymakers and business leaders need to decide how to respond to the implications of China’s economic slowdown. Options have not been adequately considered because the extent of the slowdown has not been understood and acknowledged. Even today international organizations, governments, and prominent public intellectuals endorse rosy assumptions that would not be taken seriously elsewhere. It’s time to talk about the slow growth era in China. To set the table for that, the structural economic problems that reduce China’s potential growth to 0-2% must be recognized.

Lunch will be served. It is being co-sponsored by the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Also via Zoom. Register: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_F-x26T87QLqzaHmkQfnORg#/registration

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Modern China Lecture Series featuring Fa-Ti Fan - Disaster Governance and Political Participation in China: From the Mao Era to the Present
2024-03-05 16:00 - 17:30 | CGIS Knafel K262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Fa-Ti Fan, Professor of History, Binghamton University, State University of New York

This talk discusses the modes of disaster governance and crisis management in China from the early Mao to the post-Covid era. We will start with the 1960s-70s when China was going through severe political crises, natural disasters, and geopolitical challenges. We will then broaden the timeframe and trace major similarities and changes in disaster governance from the early years of the communist regime to the present. My main focus is on state policies, but I will also discuss political participation from various social and political groups in times of disaster or crisis.

Professor Fan is a historian of science and of modern China. His research and teaching have focused on three related areas – history of environmental sciences, 20th-century China, and science and empire. He is the author of British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter (2004; Chinese translation 2011) and dozens of essays on a range of topics in history and in science studies. He is currently completing two books, one on earthquakes in communist China and the other on science and politics in republican China.

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Elizabeth Perry - Public Health, National Strength and Regime Legitimacy: China’s Patriotic Health Campaign
2024-03-05 17:00 - 18:30 | Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, 121 Bay State Rd, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Speaker: Elizabeth J. Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute

This talk focuses on China’s longest-lived mass movement: the Patriotic Health Campaign(PHC). Introduced by Mao Zedong in 1952 during the Korean War, the PHC continues even today, having recently played a role in Xi Jinping’s Zero-Covid effort. The talk will question the official characterization of the PHC as a “uniquely Chinese” approach to sanitation and epidemic control, noting the influence of the American Tuberculosis Movement and YMCA health campaigns, while at the same time emphasizing the central importance of public health in the legitimation of Chinese Communist rule, from revolutionary days to the present.

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Critical Issues Confronting China featuring Wang Hui - China as a Multi-Ethnic Society: From Empire to Nation State
2024-03-06 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Wang Hui, Changjiang Scholar Professor, Department of Chinese Literature and the Department of History, Tsinghua University; Director, Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Moderator/Discussant: Peter K. Bol, Charles H Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard Univsersity

Wang Hui‘s research interests includes Chinese intellectual history, Chinese literature, and social theory. His recent publications include The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought and China’s Twentieth Century.

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Echoes of the Past, Visions for the Future: The Power of Ideas to Navigate the China- West Divides
2024-03-08 09:15 - 2024-03-09 13:45 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speakers:Tiziana Lippiello, Ca’ FoscariMichael Puett, Harvard UniversityAnna Irene Baka, Harvard University; Ca’ FoscariBryan Van Norden, Vassar CollegeTao Jiang, Rutgers UniversityHsinning Liu, Academia SinicaWen Yu, Boston CollegeBenjamin Gallant, Harvard UniversityKaren Turner, Harvard University; College of the Holy CrossFranklin Perkins University of Hawai’iDimitra Amarantidou, University of MacauLisa Raphals, University of California, RiversideWang Hui, Tsinghua UniversityPeter Bol, Harvard University

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Ma Ran - Un/bounding the Great Wall: Sino-Japanese Documentary Media Connections in the Long 1980s
2024-03-08 11:30 - 13:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Ma Ran, Associate Professor, Cultural Studies and Screen Studies, Nagoya University, Japan; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2023-24

Chair: Jie Li, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

Spanning the late 1970s and early 1990s, a series of coproduced documentaries featuring Japanese entities in consistent partnership with China Central Television (CCTV), have emerged. Emblematic of the Sino-Japanese “techno-friendship,” these projects launched spectacular trans-China voyages undertaken by transnational film and television teams along the routes and territories across the Silk Road, the Yangtze River, and the Yellow River. This talk highlights the Great Wall project, encompassing CCTV’s Wang Changcheng (Odyssey of the Great Wall) and Tokyo Broadcasting System Television (TBS)’s Banri no chōjō (the Great Wall); both aired in 1991.

These projects arguably constitute an epistemological-technological nexus wherein the CCTV crews explore “what could be documentary(-making)” through/out the location shooting; leveraging the nexus, the Japanese teams gain privileged access to locations and infrastructural networks, enabling them to configure a multilayered Sino-fantasy, underpinned by documentary epistephilia toward Chinese histories, cultural heritages, and post-Cultural Revolution conditions of the PRC.

I contemplate the Great Wall project’s dis/continuation of the techno-friendship mode. CCTV and TBS have used their journeys along the Great Wall territories to work through disparate landscape-affective assemblages while negotiating East Asian (post-)Cold War geopolitics. While the Sino-fantasy of Banri no chōjō is drastically reterritorialized by its studio-staged reportage on the Tiananmen Incident, Wang Changcheng reinvents a self-scrutinizing gaze upon “China” in the aftermath of Tian’anmen, innovatively realigning the political aesthetics of documentary (jilupian).

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Julie Tian Miao - State Inc. And Asian Diasporas in Knowledge Spaces
2024-03-18 12:00 - 13:30 | CGIS South, Room S153, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Julie Tian Miao, Associate Professor in Property and Economic Development, University of Melbourne; Visiting Scholar, Harvard University Asia Center

Moderator: Anthony J. Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs; Director, Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia, Harvard Kennedy School

Drawing insights from three relevant yet largely separated fields of scholarship on diaspora, science policies, and (extra-)territorial development, Professor Julie Miao will conceptualize and assess how Asian tech diasporas experience knowledge space as an assemblage of ‘ethnoscape’ and ‘ideoscape’ – terms used by Appadurai, 1990 to chart the global landscapes of modernity. Focusing on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean diasporas working in biotech and related sectors in the Boston Metropolitan area, her study used ethnography and thick descriptions to examine the forming of Asian diasporas’ lived and worked experience as part of the ethnoscape and how it is shaping and shaped by the ideoscape of their homeland. Emerging evidence shows that inter-generation differences in the forming and evolving of an ethnoscape are much stronger than the inter-nationality differences; the stereotypical views about Asia and Asian people are as much self-reinforced as they are externally imposed. Most Asian tech diaspora members aim to embed themselves in the host country’s science and technology landscape, and it is the United States’ extraterritorial and national security policies that are exerting a far more significant impact on their career projections and ambitions compared to their homeland.

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Michelle Miao - Health Code Apps as Social Control in China: Empirical Findings from the Pandemic
2024-03-19 12:20 - 13:20 | Morgan Courtroom, Austin Hall, 1515 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Michelle Miao, Associate Professor of Law, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Fellow, Stanford University Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences

Michelle Miao is Associate Professor of Law at Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Her major areas of research include ethics of technological innovation, comparative law, criminal justice, law and society, and rule of law and authoritarianism. As a CUHK-Stanford University Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences Fellow for 2023-2024, she is working on a project exploring the interaction between artificial intelligence and the shifting paradigm of authoritarian governance. Professor Miao is an awardee of the American Society of Comparative Law’s Hessel Yntema Prize for the most outstanding scholarship by a scholar under 40 years of age.

Boxed lunch will be provided.

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Modern China Lecture Series featuring Christopher Courtney - Heat and the Urban Environment of Modern China
2024-03-19 16:00 - 17:30 | CGIS Knafel K262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Christopher Courtney, Associate Professor of Modern Chinese History, Durham University

Throughout history, people living in Chinese cities have often had to contend with extreme heat. Although this is natural feature of the climate, it has been exacerbated by anthropogenic processes, which have transformed cities into urban heat islands. Drawing upon a variety of sources, including oral histories collected in the “furnace city” of Wuhan, this paper examines how people have understood and sought to cope with the problem of extreme heat in China since the beginning of the twentieth century. It describes how, at the beginning of this era, traditional ideas about heat toxins and malign qi were challenged by biomedical theories about thermoregulation, eventually forming the syncretic blend of ideas about heat and health that exists in China today. This paper then examines how new technologies, such electric fans, air-conditioning, and refrigeration, promised to alleviate the effects of extreme heat. Yet it describes how these technologies met with resistance, from those who believed that unnatural forms of thermal comfort could injure your health. The paper continues by exploring how, in the austere years following 1949, bourgeois cooling technologies were rejected in favour of a new modes of heat governance. While the Maoist state promoted alternative technologies, such as the air raid shelter air-conditioning and earth refrigerators, most people relied upon even humbler technologies, such as bamboo beds and hand fans. Finally, this paper describes how, since the 1990s, China has witnessed the inexorable rise of cooling technologies. Air-conditioning and refrigeration have helped to reshape cities and transform lifestyles yet have had a dramatic effect upon the environment.

Chris Courtney is an Associate Professor in Modern Chinese History at the University of Durham, UK. His research focusses largely upon the environmental and social history of Wuhan. His monograph The Nature of Disaster in China (published in Chinese as 龙王之怒)examined the history of the 1931 Central China Flood. He has also published on topics including the history of environmental religion, fire disasters, and Maoist flood (mis)management. Over the past few years, he has been collaborating with colleagues at the National University of Singapore on a project examining the historical and contemporary problem of heat in Asian cities. His next monograph is tentatively entitled A World History Wuhan.

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Big Waves, Great Earthquakes Screening No. 1 - China's First Environmental Film - Big Tree County, featuring an introduction by Iza Ding
2024-03-19 18:00 - 20:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Introduction: Iza Ding, Associate Professor of Political Science, Northwestern UniversityModerator: Sam Maclean, Communications Manager, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

The screening will be followed by a Zoom Q&A with filmmaker Hao Zhiqiang.

The Fairbank Center’s Big Waves, Great Earthquakes screening series presents its first film, China’s First Environmental Film – Big Tree County (1992).

Big Waves, Great Earthquakes explores the largely unseen early history of independent film in China, beginning in the late 1980s. Wu Wenguang— who’s usually credited as China’s first independent filmmaker— has likened the emotions of this era to a “big wave”; Wu’s contemporary, Wen Pulin, was working independently even earlier, documenting the avant-garde arts scene in Beijing with his legendary, but never-completed, film The Great Earthquake. This screening series will unearth films long-suppressed by Chinese authorities in order to rewrite the narrative of modern film history in China.

Filmmaker Hao Zhiqiang has said that he wants to capture “the soul of the Chinese people” with his work. His first two films do this by showing how larger forces (the wind-like momentum of history and a town that cut down the giant tree it was named after) can render society helpless to change. Wind (1988) is the first independently produced animated film ever made in China; it meditates on the legacy of the Cultural Revolution, and how it shaped the social and political attitudes of many artists and intellectuals in the late 1980s. Big Tree County (1992) may well be China’s first environmental film: While working at CCTV in the early ‘90s, Hao was inspired by a newspaper article describing a sulfur-iron mining town to haul his station’s equipment hundreds of miles to the border of Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou provinces and film a village whose “Big Tree” had been chopped down decades earlier to build the pollution-spewing, labor-exploiting sulfur-iron mine that came to define the town. This modest but rigorous example of “direct cinema” documentary registers a forceful sociopolitical activism and an uncommon concern for environmental issues.

Iza Ding is Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. Her research explores modernity and its discontents, especially in areas related to the environment, climate change, bureaucracy, populism, nationalism, morality, political memory, and ideology. Her recent publications include The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China (Cornell University Press 2022), and articles in World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Democratization, Studies in Comparative International Development, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and China Quarterly. She is working on a book-length monograph on the global historical waves of environmentalism. She received her Ph.D in Government from Harvard University and her BA in Political Science and Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Michigan.

Wind directed by Hao Zhiqiang. China, 1988, animated, 7 min.Big Tree County directed by Hao Zhiqiang. China, 1992, documentary, 42 min.

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Mitchell Presnick - US-China Business Relations: Past, Present, and Future
2024-03-19 18:00 - 19:30 | Room K354, CGIS Knafel, 1737 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Mitchell Presnick, Visiting Fellow, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

Mr. Presnick will lead a fireside chat about his 30 years in China from 1988 – 2019. Topics will include serving on Budweiser’s（百威啤酒) China market entry team, founding the China practice of APCO Worldwide (安可顾问), a Washington, D.C. based global advisory and advocacy firm, founding Super 8 Hotels China (中国速8酒店连锁) an economy hotel chain with over 1100 locations, and serving as board member and vice chair of the American Chamber of Commerce in China during China’s accession to the GATT (now WTO).

We will also explore current opportunities and challenges inherent in US-China business relations in the post-engagement era.

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Harvard-Yenching Institute Annual Roundtable - Gender and Populist Nationalism in Asia
2024-03-20 15:30 - 17:30 | CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium (S010), 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Panelists:Hyaeweol Choi, C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley Family and Korea Foundation Chair in Korean Studies, University of IowaIza Ding, Associate Professor of Political Science, Northwestern UniversityTanika Sarkar, Retired Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Visiting Professor, Ashoka UniversityChizuko Ueno, Professor Emerita, The University of Tokyo, Ph.D in Sociology

Chair: Elizabeth J. Perry ,Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute

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Discussion of Technology and Innovation in China
2024-03-21 13:30 - 15:00 | CGIS South Room S250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
***THIS EVENT HAS REACHED CAPACITY, ONLY PRE-REGISTERED ATTENDEES WILL BE ADMITTED***

Speakers:Bo An, 2023-24 An Wang Postdoctoral Fellow, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies Andrew Kennedy, Associate Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National UniversityModerator:Iain Johnston, Governor James Albert Noe and Linda Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs, Harvard UniversityFeaturing two short research presentations followed by a roundtable discussion.

Post-maintenance: the Chinese Software Crisis in the 1980s, presented by Bo An

In this talk, I present a brief history of early Chinese computer software leading up to a crisis in maintenance in the 1980s, which was one of the main causes for the failure of building an indigenous computing industry in the PRC. Through this forgotten chapter, I hope to shed light on the broader context of the shift during the Deng period from self-reliance to foreign technology transfer, especially from the perspective of technological infrastructure. This allows a more nuanced understanding of the post-socialist transition and the dynamics between self-reliance and foreign dependency, as well as between the issues of innovation and maintenance in a long history of technology.

Bo An holds a combined Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Literatures and Film and Media Studies from Yale University. Based on research into the history and theory of information technology in modern China, his dissertation examines the rise of computing in the People’s Republic of China between the 1940s and 1980s. Dr. An is currently investigating post-1980s applied computing and the longer global history of science behind it.

China’s New Paradigm: How the Party Learned to Love the Innovation System, presented by Andrew Kennedy

China’s pursuit of “innovation-driven development” has become central to its rise in the 21st century.  China’s approach to science, technology, and innovation has evolved considerably, however, and remains difficult to understand.  This presentation highlights the policy paradigms behind China’s changing approach and how CCP leaders have embraced and localized the concept of the innovation system in particular.

Andrew Kennedy is Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. He is the author of The Conflicted Superpower: America’s Collaboration with China and India in Global Innovation (Columbia 2018) and The International Ambitions of Mao and Nehru: National Efficacy Beliefs and the Making of Foreign Policy (Cambridge 2012), among others. His current research focuses on China’s approach to science and technology since 1949 and China’s rise as a technology power in the 21st century. Please register for this discussion at: https://forms.office.com/r/6PBbnhWYm9.

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Critical Issues Confronting China featuring Thomas J. Christensen - Thomas Schelling, the United States, and China’s Rise
2024-03-21 16:30 - 17:45 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Thomas J. Christensen, James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs

*PLEASE NOTE DAY AND TIME CHANGE FROM OUR REGULAR CRITICAL ISSUES TALKS*

Thomas Schelling’s theoretical work on coercive diplomacy carries important lessons for U.S. security policy toward a rising China. This talk will address the challenges in combining credible threats and credible assurances in deterring a PRC military attack on Taiwan and the need to differentiate clearly between unconditional restrictions on the transfer of militarily relevant technology to China and conditional threats to punish China economically if Beijing adopts certain proscribed policies.

Note: Thomas Christensen serves as a Senior Advisor to the Office of China Coordination at the U.S. Department of State. All opinions expressed in this talk and in the discussion that follows are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government.

Thomas J. Christensen is James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations and Director of the China and the World program in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. From 2006 to 2008, he served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, with responsibility for relations with China, Taiwan, and Mongolia. He is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and editor of the Nancy B. Tucker and Warren I. Cohen book series on the United States in Asia at the Columbia University Press. He received a Distinguished Public Service Award from the United States Department of State.

His research and teaching focuses on China’s foreign relations, the international relations of East Asia, and international security. Previously, he taught at Princeton University, MIT, and Cornell University. He received his bachelor’s from Haverford College, his master’s in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania, and a doctorate in political science from Columbia University.

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Rethinking China's International Relations: China and the World Program 20th Annual Conference
2024-03-22 09:00 - 17:15 | CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium (S010), 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Register now

The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies is proud to present the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program’s 20th Annual Conference, Rethinking China’s International Relations, which will convene a roster of experts from top universities for panel discussions on China’s global influence, its economic slowdown, the Belt and Road Initiative, and what China is learning from recent wars around the globe.

The China and the World Program is directed by Thomas J. Christensen, James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, and Alastair Iain Johnston, Governor James Albert Noe and Linda Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs, Harvard University.

9:00 AM: Introduction: China and the World Program & Fairbank Center for Chinese StudiesAlastair Iain Johnston, Harvard UniversityThomas J. Christensen, Columbia UniversityMark Wu, Harvard University

9:15 AM: PANEL #1 – Measuring China’s ‘Influence’ in International AffairsAudrye Wong, University of Southern CaliforniaInjoo Sohn, Seoul National UniversityAndrew Chubb, Lancaster UniversityEnze Han, Hong Kong UniversityModerator: Elizabeth J. Perry, Harvard University11:00 AM: PANEL #2 – Foreign Policy Implications of the PRC’s Economic SlowdownHong Zhang, Harvard UniversityYeling Tan, University of OxfordAndrew Kennedy, Australian National UniversityModerator: Meg Rithmire, Harvard UniversityMid-day Break

1:30 PM: PANEL #3 – Prospects for the Belt and Road InitiativeMin Ye, Boston UniversityAdele Carrai, New York UniversityEyck Freymann, Stanford UniversityModerator: Rana Mitter, Harvard University3:15 PM: PANEL #4 – What Chinese Leaders Are Learning from Recent WarsAndrew Erickson, U.S. Naval War CollegeDawn Murphy, National War CollegeTyler Jost, Brown UniversityModerator: Alexandra Vacroux, Harvard University 5:00 PM: Closing Remarks: Director, China and the World ProgramThomas J. Christensen, Columbia University

The day’s events are free with registration. Go to cwp.sipa.columbia.edu or https://forms.gle/pMRHYALvvaBEaLF87

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