***NOW TAKING PLACE VIA ZOOM*** Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Courtney Fung — Can China Achieve its UN Ambitions?
2026-02-23 16:30 - 17:45 (America/New_York) | Presented via Zoom
Zoom Webinar Registration Link

Speaker: Courtney Fung, Associate Professor, School of International Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Please note the different day and time for this Critical Issues talk.***DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER, THIS LECTURE WILL NOW TAKE PLACE VIA ZOOM WEBINAR***REGISTER AT: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_af-PQxTHQXaRabRNCONE6QChina presents itself as a supporter of ‘true multilateralism,’ with the United Nations as a bedrock institution of global governance. The United Nations’ truly global reach, China’s UN Security Council veto, and position as the only legal representative of China in the UN system, makes the body a key forum for China’s foreign policy. China seeks reform from within the multilateral institution to have it better align with PRC foreign policy preferences. Indeed, China’s well-reported multilateral rise is presumed to challenge US leadership in a Western-dominated UN system, especially in the wake of the recent US departure from various UN bodies. To assess whether China can achieve its UN ambitions, I first outline China’s power and influence against a basic heuristic of China’s UN contributions, before focusing on China’s self-proclaimed ‘global public goods’ campaign. I next turn to the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative to highlight how each of these Initiatives draw upon different facets of power, clarifying PRC tactics to promote these Initiatives within and through the UN system. My research draws mainly on written primary and secondary sources produced by PRC and UN elites, and supplemented by insights from PRC, US and UN officials in Washington, DC and New York City in May and June 2024, and Beijing in December 2025.

Dr. Courtney J. Fung is Associate Professor in the Discipline of Security Studies in the School of International Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. She is concurrently Non-Resident Fellow at LSE IDEAS; the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University; at Asia Society Australia, and at the Lowy Institute. She was a Fulbright Scholar at Georgetown University in spring 2024. Her research focuses on how rising powers address the norms and provisions for global governance and international security, with a primary focus on China within the UN system. Courtney’s published research spans international civil service personnel contributions and human protection issues broadly defined (e.g. cyber norms, peacekeeping, intervention, and the responsibility to protect) and the effects of status for cooperation and international norm development. Courtney’s book, China and Intervention at the UN Security Council: Reconciling Status (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the BISA LHM Ling Outstanding First Book Prize. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. She serves as an associate editor for H-DIPLO ISSF, Contemporary Security Policy and the Australian Journal of International Affairs.

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***POSTPONED*** Modern China Lecture Series featuring Xiaobo Lü — Domination and Mobilization: The Rise and Fall of Political Parties in China’s Republican Era
2026-02-24 12:30 - 14:00 | MA
***DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER, THIS TALK IS POSTPONED UNTIL A FUTURE DATE***Speaker: Xiaobo Lü, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of California, BerkeleyXiaobo Lü is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research explores the relationships between fiscal policies, party-building, and state-society relations in authoritarian regimes, particularly in China. He is particularly interested in the formation and functioning of political parties and institutions in authoritarian regimes across both historical and contemporary contexts. Xiaobo Lü earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University in 2011.

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Urban China Lecture Series Featuring Song Nianshen -- Space, State, and Daily Life in a Manchurian City
2026-02-24 20:30 - 22:00 | Presented via Zoom
zoom meeting link

Speaker: Song Nianshen, Tsinghua UniversityWhat can one neighborhood reveal about the making of a modern nation? This talk deciphers the unexpected significance of Xita, a half-square-mile quarter in Shenyang, in Northeast China. It shows that over nearly four centuries, Xita has been shaped and reshaped by empire, war, migration, and urban transformation. The history of this small area mirrors large-scale changes, including and especially China’s metamorphosis from a multi-ethnic Eurasian empire to a postindustrial society. By studying how global and local forces play out in everyday spaces, the talk reveals a perspective for understanding China’s past—not from the top down, but through the streets and people who lived it.

Professor Nianshen Song is a historian at the Tsinghua Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. His research and teaching focus on late imperial and modern East Asia, with special interest in frontiers, trans-regional networks and historical geography. His monographies in English include The Neighborhood: Space, State, and Daily Life in a Manchurian City (2025) and Making Borders in Modern East Asia: The Tumen River Demarcation, 1881–1919 (2018).

Join Zoom Meeting Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97955535212

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China and the Asymmetric Great Power Competition in the Middle East
2026-02-26 16:30 - 18:00 | CGIS Knafel K262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Gangzhen She, Visiting Scholar, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs; Director, Center for Overseas Security and Associate Professor Department of International Relations, Tsinghua University, China

Discussant: Robert Ross, Professor of Political Science, Boston University; Fairbank Center Associate

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China Energy Dialogue: Can China Remain an Advanced Technology Superpower?
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:15 | T-G50 Executive Education Classroom, Taubman Building, 15 Eliot St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Registration required

Speaker: Meg Rithmire, James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration, Business, Government, and International Economy Unit, Harvard Business SchoolModerator: Henry Lee, Jassim M. Jaidah Family Director, Environment and Natural Resources Program; Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy SchoolIn this China Energy Dialogue, Meg Rithmire, James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, will explore whether China can sustain its dominance in high-tech innovation – and what the rest of the world should do about it.

This seminar is part of the China Energy Dialogues (中国能源对话), a new monthly seminar series sponsored by the Belfer Center’s Environment and Natural Resources Program that brings together experts and Harvard community members to discuss energy, climate, and environmental issues in China.

RSVP required. A Harvard University ID is required to attend. Please note that this seminar is in-person only and will not be recorded.

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Modern China Lecture Series featuring Micah Muscolino — Remaking the Earth, Exhausting the People: The Burden of Conservation in Modern China
2026-02-26 17:30 - 18:45 | Room K354, CGIS Knafel, 1737 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Micah Muscolino, Professor and Paul G. Pickowicz Endowed Chair in Modern Chinese History, University of California San Diego

From the 1940s to the 1960s, soil and water conservation measures remade both the arid, erosion-prone landscape of China’s Loess Plateau and the lives of rural people. Drawing from his recent book, Micah Muscolino discusses how the Chinese state imposed the burden of conservation on rural communities and they navigated those demands. Weaving together archival research and oral history interviews, Muscolino’s multitiered investigation uncovers relationships between the forces of nature, Chinese state policies, and the embodied experiences of rural men and women. This approach highlights the contestations and compromises that the state’s environmental interventions triggered in rural society. Because modern China’s revolutionary transformations altered human relationships with the natural world, as Muscolino demonstrates, understanding that history from the perspectives of China’s common people requires sustained attention to their everyday interactions with the environment.

Micah Muscolino is Professor and Pickowicz Endowed Chair in modern Chinese history at the University of California, San Diego. His publications include Remaking the Earth, Exhausting the People: The Burden of Conservation in Modern China (University of Washington Press, 2025) and the forthcoming edited volume Revolutionary Natures: Grassroots Environmental Histories of China’s Mao Era (University of Washington Press, 2026).

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The Origins and Development of Chinese Heavy Ink Painting
2026-02-27 12:00 - 13:30 | Sackler Building, Lower Level, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Lan Zhenghui, Visiting Scholar, Harvard University CAMLab

This talk will take place in Mandarin.In this lecture, Lan Zhenghui will delve into the fundamental concepts of contemporary ink art, including its origins, structural expression, contextual relationships, East-West connections, and techniques such as splashing and surface expression. He will also share his decades-long journey and fruitful achievements in contemporary ink art, and offer his perspective on its future impact globally.

Registration required

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Critical Issues Confronting China series featuring Xi Lian — Christian Social Activism in Contemporary China
2026-03-04 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Xi Lian, David C. Steinmetz Distinguished Professor of World Christianity, Duke University Divinity School; Visiting Scholar, Harvard Divinity School

Discussant: James Robson, James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard College Professor, Harvard University; Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute

In his Asian tour in 1920, Bertrand Russell noted the prominence of Christians in the Korean independence movement, adding that in Korea “a Christian was practically synonymous with a bomb-thrower.” This talk explores a less colorful but no less pronounced role of Christians in rights defense and political dissent in China a century later.

Professor Lian is David C. Steinmetz Distinguished Professor of World Christianity at Duke Divinity School. His research is focused on China’s modern encounter with Christianity. His first book, The Conversion of Missionaries (1997), is a critical study of American Protestant missions against the backdrop of rising Chinese nationalism in the early twentieth century. His second book, Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China (2010), winner of the 2011 Christianity Today Book Award, examines the development of missionary Christianity into a vibrant, indigenous faith of the Chinese masses. Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao’s China (2018) is his most recent book. It is the first authoritative, documented biography of the most important political dissident in Mao’s China, whose open opposition to communism was sustained by her Christian faith. Dr. Lian’s other research projects include the flourishing of Christianity among minority peoples on the margins of the Chinese state and the emergence of Protestant elites and their prominent, if also precarious, role in the search for civil society in today’s China.

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Film Screening — Invisible Nation, followed by Q&A with Director Vanessa Hope
2026-03-04 18:00 - 21:00 | Hall C, Science Center, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Vanessa Hope, DirectorDiscussant: Ya-Wen Lei, Professor, Department of Sociology, Harvard University

Invisible Nation follows the story of Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai Ing-wen, and explores themes of resilience, identity, and freedom, while shedding light on Taiwan’s complex history and its ongoing struggle in the international society. The 90-minute documentary will be followed by a discussion featuring Director Vanessa Hope and Prof. Ya-Wen Lei.

Register Here

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Taiwan Workshop featuring Peter Dutton — What is the Legal Status of Taiwan and Why Does it Matter?
2026-03-06 11:00 - 12:15 | CGIS South, Room S153, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Peter Dutton, Senior Research Fellow, Paul Tsai China Center; Professor Emeritus, U.S. Naval War College

Discussants: Alastair Iain Johnston, Professor, Government Department, Harvard UniversityWilliam P. Alford, Jerome A. and Joan L. Cohen Professor of Law; Director, East Asian Legal Studies Program; Chair, Harvard Law School Project on Disability, Harvard Law School

Taiwan’s political status often dominates headlines. Yet its legal status — the foundation of U.S. policy — remains underdiscussed. At this event, Paul Tsai China Center Senior Fellow Dr. Peter Dutton will trace Taiwan’s territorial status from the Qing Dynasty to the present day, shedding light on the legal principles and historical developments that define its position in the world.

Peter Dutton is a senior research fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center and Professor Emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College. Before coming to Yale, Dutton served the U.S. Navy for more than 40 years in active duty and civilian capacities. He has advised a series of Pacific Fleet Commanders, Secretaries of Defense, Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other government offices on policies in the Asia-Pacific region and testified before the Senate and the House on a variety of China-related issues. He was also a professor of international law and China studies at the U.S. Naval War College, where he directed the China Maritime Studies Institute and served as dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies.

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Mediated Populism and Capital Justice in China
2026-03-09 12:20 - 13:20 | WCC 1015, Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Michelle Miao, Associate Professor of Law, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Social media function not merely as communication conduits but as active agents shaping public discourses central to judicial matters and political life. This talk examines how public discussions of high-profile capital homicide cases are transmitted through social media algorithms. Drawing on mediated populism and theories of political communication, it analyses media data to explore the intersection of platform governance, state communication strategies, and popular engagement with criminal justice. Employing content analysis and quantitative metrics , the study contributes to scholarship on judicial politics and the evolving landscape of comparative law in the social media age.

Professor Michelle Miao is an Associate Professor of law from the Faculty of Law, Chinese University of Hong Kong. She holds a DPhil degree in law from the University of Oxford and two LLM degrees from New York University and Renmin University of China respectively. She previously conducted research in the capacity of New York University’s Global Fellow (2014-5) , University of Oxford’s Howard League Fellow (2013-4) and British Academy’s prestigious Postdoc Research Fellow (2015-6), National University of Singapore’s ASLI visiting scholar (2019) and recently Harvard Yenching Scholar (2019-20).

Among Professor Miao’s research interests are the intersections between law and technology, criminal justice, socio-legal studies and comparative law. She published with reputable international journals such as American Journal of Comparative Law, International Comparative Law Quarterly and British Journal of Criminology. She presented her work at Asian Law Institute’s Junior Faculty Forum (2021), Chicago-Tsinghua Junior Faculty Forum (2019), and Stanford International Junior Faculty Forum (IJFF) (2015). Her scholarship and commentaries have been featured in various international media outlets, including The Guardian, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, and The Globe and Mail.

Professor Miao is an awardee of the American Society of Comparative Law’s Hessel Yntema Prize (2020) for the most outstanding scholarship by a scholar under 40 years of age. She is also a recipient of CUHK Law’s Academic Impact in Legal Scholarship (2021), Asian Law Institute’s Junior Faculty Award for Best Paper (2020), Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Young Researcher Award (2019), and Chinese University Faculty Teaching Excellence Awards (Hong Kong, 2019).

A light lunch will be provided. Please register here.

A Harvard ID is required in order to enter Harvard Law School buildings. If you have questions, please contact eals@law.harvard.edu in advance of the event.

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Be Water: Collective Improvisation and the 2019 Hong Kong Protests
2026-03-09 13:30 - 14:45 | CGIS South Room S250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Ming-sho Ho, Distinguished Professor, Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University

How do ordinary citizens organize to push back against creeping authoritarianism in the wake of increased technological surveillance by government? What happens when these protest efforts falter? Drawing on an analysis of over 1700 events events and 189 interviews tied to Hong Kong’s 2019 Anti-Extradition Law movement, Professor Ho offers reflections on these questions based on the findings of his recent book. He highlights the dynamic at work as ordinary citizens attempt to exert their agency in the wake of political change and a government responds with repressive countermeasures. Join us for a discussion of a case study of Hong Kong’s unsuccessful 2019 protest movement and the lessons it may offer for ordinary citizens elsewhere hoping to push back against the state.

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HYI Annual Roundtable — Gender, Class, and Youth: The Formation of Civic Democracy in Asia in the Post-Developmental State Era
2026-03-09 16:30 - 18:30 | CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium (S010), 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Panelists:Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, Harvard Divinity School Fellow, Publisher, and Democracy ActivistMing-sho Ho, Professor, Department of Sociology, National Taiwan UniversityEleana Kim, Professor, Anthropology and Asian American Studies, University of California, IrvineHyun Mee Kim, Professor, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Yonsei UniversityAnthony J. Spires, Professor, Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, The University of MelbourneKiyoteru Tsutsui, Director, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Professor of Sociology, Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor of Japanese Studies, Stanford UniversityModerator: James Robson (James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations; Harvard College Professor; Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute)

Gender, Class, and Youth: The Formation of Civic Democracy in Asia in the Post-Developmental State Era

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Urban China Lecture Series Featuring Su Xiaobo -- State Venturism and the Financialization of Urban Development in China
2026-03-10 20:30 - 22:00 | Presented via Zoom
zoom meeting link

Speaker: Su Xiaobo, University of Oregon

Financialization has become a central force to reshape urban development. This paper explores one specific mechanism of financialization—state-led venture capital (SVC)—to elucidate an emergent trend in which governments act as equity investors to support startups and scaleups. Such investments are not necessarily aimed at ownership, but rather at fostering technological innovation and promoting urban development, which gives rise to state venturism. China provides a particularly revealing case of state venturism: governments at multiple administrative levels have leveraged SVCs to support high-tech firms within their jurisdictions. The study case is Hefei, China’s capital of state-led venture investment. Through equity investment, municipal governments in China are forging new alliances with private investors and entrepreneurial actors—governing not via direct ownership of production assets, but through equity participation and market-shaping investment vehicles.

Xiaobo Su is a professor of urban and regional development in the Department of Geography, University of Oregon. Currently his research interest is in state-led venture investment and its role in urban innovation in China and the U.S.

This event series is sponsored by the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, and the Australian Centre on China in the World.

Join Zoom Meeting Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97955535212

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Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Jennifer Lind — Can China’s Smart Authoritarianism Model Win?
2026-03-11 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Jennifer Lind, Associate Professor of Government, Dartmouth University

Discussant: Meg Rithmire, James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration, Business, Government, and International Economy Unit, Harvard Business SchoolGreat power competition requires countries to be technological leaders, but an influential literature holds that autocracies, which suppress creativity and information flows, stifle innovation. Many observers of China’s rise thus argued that it would be unable to compete technologically with the United States. Jennifer Lind’s Autocracy 2.0 shows that China has become a global innovation leader. She argues that China and other “smart authoritarians” have adapted their tools of control to better compete with free societies in today’s globalized information age. Authoritarian adaptation suggests that China – and the countries that emulate its smart authoritarian model – will be far more competitive than many observers expect: which has dramatic implications for the balance of power, the future of international order, and the global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism.

Jennifer Lind is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, and a Faculty Associate at the Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies at Harvard University. She is also a Research Associate in the US and North America Programme at Chatham House. Professor Lind’s research focuses on the international relations of East Asia and US foreign policy toward the region.

Lind is the author of Autocracy 2.0: How China’s Rise Reinvented Tyranny (Cornell University Press, 2025), a book that shows how authoritarian adaptation enabled China’s rise to become a superpower and technological peer competitor of the United States. Previously, Lind published (also with Cornell University Press), Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics (2008). She has authored numerous scholarly articles in journals such as International Security and International Studies Quarterly and writes for wider audiences in Foreign Affairs. Her commentary is regularly quoted in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and National Public Radio (NPR). Lind founded and serves as the editor-in-chief of Blue Blaze, a multi-author Substack about international relations and U.S. foreign policy. Lind holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a MPIA from the School of Global Policy Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and a BA from the University of California.

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From Copycat to Technology Innovator: China's Use of IP as Strategic Governance
2026-03-11 16:00 - 17:15 | WCC 2004, Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Haochen Sun, Professor of Law, The University of Hong Kong

What role have state-orchestrated intellectual property policies played in China’s emergence as a major technology innovator? This talk discusses two interrelated transformations that have taken place in China over the past two decades: the rise and fall of the shanzai (copycat) culture movement and China’s ascent as a tech superpower since 2015. In analyzing these transformations, the talk explains how China has deployed IP as a tool of strategic governance and statecraft.

Professor Haochen Sun specializes in intellectual property, technology law, and Chinese law. His wide-ranging scholarship has delved into areas such as the legal status of artificial intelligence creations, access to patented medicines and vaccines, intellectual property rights owners’ responsibilities, and the trademark protection of luxury brands. He is currently working on two new research projects. The first one aims to develop a new ethical framework for regulating AI creativity, while the second one critically examines the epic transformations that have taken place in China’s regulation of technologies. He recently founded the Program on Artificial Intelligence and the Law, a research hub for studying the impact of AI on the legal system.

Coffee and light snacks will be provided. Please register here.

A Harvard ID is required in order to enter Harvard Law School buildings. If you have questions, please contact eals@law.harvard.edu in advance of the event.

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Technology and Society in/through Global China: New Reflections, New Visions
2026-03-13 09:30 - 15:30 | Room S030, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Situated at a complex intersection where economic imperatives, socio-cultural transformations, and geopolitical shifts converge, technological trajectories within the orbit of “global China” have emerged as a pivotal force reconfiguring domestic fabrics and the international order. To navigate this complexity, the workshop transcends traditional disciplinary silos. We foster an interdisciplinary dialogue by bringing macro-level political economy into conversation with human-centered inquiries from the humanities and social sciences. By bridging disparate methodologies—from ethnographic and archival work to data-driven analysis—the workshop prompts a necessary rethinking of knowledge production in an era of technological transformation. We invite scholars at all career stages to collaboratively examine the socio-technical landscapes of ‘Global China’ as a critical, contested, and fundamentally interdisciplinary focal point of inquiry. The workshop features three synergistic open sessions: a forum on Critical Reflections on Studying Technology, a research seminar on Comparative Insights into Techno-economic Governance, and a panel on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Digital Platforms. Together, we aim to generate new visions and critical reflections on the social life of technology in and through a transforming global China.

Workshop Schedule9:30 – 10:45 AMForum: Critical Reflections on Studying TechnologyParticipants:Susan Greenhalgh, John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Research Professor of Chinese Society, Department of Anthropology, Harvard UniversityYa-Wen Lei, Professor of Sociology, Harvard UniversityMeg Rithmire, James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration, Business, Government, and International Economy Unit, Harvard Business SchoolMoira Weigel, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University

10:45 – 11:05 AMRefreshment Break

11:05 AM – 12:35 PMSeminar: Comparative Insights into Techno-Economic GovernanceParticipants:Jack Linzhou XingAn Wang Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University Fairbank CenterRiding with the State: Didi and the Precarious Symbiosis between State and Platforms in ChinaYolanda Yuxing ZhangAn Wang Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University Fairbank CenterPlatform Supply Chains and New Human Conditions in ChinaDiscussants:Ya-Wen LeiProfessor of Sociology, Harvard UniversityMoira WeigelAssistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University

12:35 – 2:00 PMLunch provided

2:00 – 3:30 PMPanel: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Digital PlatformsParticipants:Julie Yujie ChenAssociate Professor, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (ICCIT) and Faculty of Information, University of TorontoTheorizing Digital Employment Configuration of AI Data WorkJoshua NevesAssociate Professor of Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia UniversityOn Ubiquity: Form and Platform in Lu Yang’s Doku SeriesMarc SteinbergProfessor, Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia UniversityAsian Platform CapitalismsLin ZhangAssociate Professor, Communication and Media Studies, University of New HampshireThe Data Fix: Digital Agriculture and the Sociotechnical Politics of Datafication andAssetizationParticipant BiographiesSusan GreenhalghGreenhalgh’s work seeks to understand the emergence of new forms of scientific governance in the context of rapid shifts in global and local political economies. Her research has focused on three fields of bodily governance in the Chinese and the U.S. society: the management of populations, clinical biomedicine, and global health. Greenhalgh’s research also focuses on Chinese projects of social modernity – state efforts to transform China’s “backward masses” into the modern workers and citizens needed to make China a prosperous, globally prominent nation. Her influential works include but are not limited to Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China (2008), Fat-talk Nation: The Human Costs of America’s War on Fat (2015), Can Science and Technology Save China? (co-edited with Li Zhang, 2020), Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola (2024).Ya-wen LeiYa-wen Lei’s research examines political and socioeconomic transformation, with a particular focus on the relationship between technology, society, and political economy. She is the author of two books: The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China (Princeton University Press, 2018) and The Gilded Cage: Techno-State Capitalism in China (Princeton University Press, 2023). Her work has appeared in leading sociological journals, including the Annual Review of Sociology, American Sociological Review, and American Journal of Sociology. Her publications have received extensive recognition from the American Sociological Association, the Law and Society Association, theSociety for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, and The China Quarterly.Meg RithmireMeg Rithmire is the James E. Robison Professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit. Professor Rithmire holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University, and her primary expertise is in the comparative political economy of development with a focus on China and Asia. Her work also focuses on China’s role in the world, including Chinese outward investment and lending practices and economic relations between China and other countries, especially the United States. A new project on business geopolitical risk and resilience, for which she is co-chairing an initiative with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, focuses on how firms can and should change their governance practices to deal with geopolitical and especially national security risk.

Moira WeigelMoira Weigel writes and teaches about the history, theory, and social life of media and communication technologies, from the early 19th century to the present. Her first book, Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating (2016, Macmillan) shows that modern courtship practices have consistently coevolved with consumer capitalism and gendered work. Her second book (co-edited with Ben Tarnoff), Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do and How They Do It (2020, FSG Originals), is a series of long-form anonymous interviews with workers at every level ofthe Bay Area tech industry. Her current research focuses on transnational online marketplaces, arguing that despite tech competition, cross-border e-commerce has made ordinary people in China and the U.S. ever more closely entangled.Jack Linzhou XingJack Linzhou Xing holds a Ph.D. in History and Sociology of Technology and Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is interested in the social implications and governance of the 4 platform economy, digital infrastructure, and digital labor, with a regional focus on China. At theFairbank Center, he will be working on the contested development and deployment of autonomous vehicles in China.Yolanda Yuxing ZhangYolanda Yuxing Zhang holds a Ph.D. in Information Studies from the University of Toronto. She is interested in how platforms bridge various markets and how value is translated across the interfaces of the economy, the sustainable development sphere, and innovation culture. At the Fairbank Center, Zhang plans to extend her doctoral research to examine the role of platforms, as both a design logic and a structuring system, in industrial upgrading.Julie Yujie ChenJulie Yujie Chen is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (ICCIT) and Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research examines the transformation of work and workers’ subjectivity in relation to digital technology, capitalism, and globalization. She is the co-author of Media and Management (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) and Super-sticky WeChat and Chinese Society (Emerald, 2018). She is a member of the Capacitor Collective writing Notes Toward a Digital Workers’ Inquiry (Common Notions, 2025). Chen is also the founding editor of Platforms & Society and the co-editor of the SAGE Handbook of Digital Labour (Sage, 2026). Currently, she is writing a book on Chinese data workers in the AI industry.Joshua NevesJoshua Neves is Associate Professor of Film and Moving Image Studies and Director of the Global Emergent Media (GEM) Lab at Concordia University. He is co-author (with Aleena Chia, Susanna Paasonen, and Ravi Sundaram) of Technopharmacology (Minnesota University Press / Meson Press, 2022), author of Underglobalization: Beijing’s Media Urbanism and the Chimera of Legitimacy (Duke University Press, 2020), co-editor (w/ Marc Steinberg) of In/Convenience: Inhabiting the Logistical Surround (Institute of Network Cultures, 2024) and co-editor (w/ Bhaskar Sarkar) of Asian Video Cultures: In the Penumbra of the Global (Duke University Press, 2017).Marc SteinbergMarc Steinberg researches the impacts of digital platforms on management practices, media industries, and cultural life in East Asia. He is the author of Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), The Platform Economy: How Japan Transformed the Commercial Internet (2019), and Media and Management (2021), among other books, and has coedited Media Theory in Japan (Duke University Press, 2017) and In/Convenience: Inhabiting the Logistical Surround (Institute of Network Cultures, 2024). He is currently completing The Convenience Story, a book about the Japanese convenience store and the platformization of convenience.Lin ZhangZhang’s research encompasses a critical examination of technology, innovation, labor, and governance through a global lens. She place particular emphasis on issues of social justice and intersectionality, exploring various sectors including digital platforms, biomedicine and medtech, new agriculture, and the broader landscape of knowledge and cultural economy. Her primary geographical focus lies on China and the experiences of ethnic Asian communities within a global and comparative context. Zhang is the author of The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy (2023, Columbia University Press), one of the first multi-sited ethnographic 5 accounts of the rising entrepreneurial labor in urban, rural, and transnational China since tech innovation had accelerated in the country after 2008.

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Soldiers and Cellphones: The Cold War Roots of the Consumer Electronics Industry in Shenzhen, China
2026-03-17 10:30 - 11:30 | Presented via Zoom
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Speaker: Taomo Zhou, National University of SingaporeMeeting Registration – Zoom

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Chinese Immigrant Lawyers in the United States: Challenges and Adaptation
2026-03-23 12:20 - 13:20 | WCC 3009, Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speakers:Ji Li, John & Marilyn Long Professor of US-China Business and Law, UC Irvine School of Law William Lee, Partner, WilmerHaleEli Goldston, Visiting Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School Tiezheng Li, Assistant China Representative, International Law Institute David B. Wilkins, Lester Kissel Professor of Law, Harvard Law SchoolJoin the Harvard Law and International Development Society (LIDS) and the China Law Association (CLA) for a panel discussion on Chinese Immigrant Lawyers in the US. Lunch will be provided.

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China Humanities Seminar featuring Rebecca Doran — Dress Regulation, Dynastic Image-Building, and Geopolitical Competition in Early Medieval China
2026-03-23 16:00 - 18:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Rebecca Doran, University of Miami

The various regimes that emerged during third through sixth centuries grappled from different perspectives with the establishment of dynastic dress regulations, meant to promote hierarchical order at home and project legitimacy and strength abroad. This form of conveying authority was complicated by geopolitical developments, including regime changes and tensions between competing regimes. Discussions and decisions regarding dress regulations were informed not only by scholarly understandings of ritual sartorial precedent, but also by these contemporary sources of friction and identity-building. The talk examines several case studies demonstrating the interconnections during this period between dress regulation, dynastic image-building, and inter-dynastic rivalries.

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Critical Issues Confronting China series featuring Robert Suettinger — Factional Politics in the CCP: Is Change in the Air?
2026-03-25 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker:Robert Lee Suettinger, Former National Intelligence Officer for East Asia, National Intelligence Counsel

Discussant: Arunabh Ghosh, Professor of History, Harvard UniversityOver the past year, Robert Suettinger has spent much time monitoring domestic politics in the People’s Republic of China, much as he did as an apprentice political-military analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency fifty years ago. He notes that there seems to be even less agreement now than at the end of Mao Zedong’s life about what’s really going on. Depending on who one reads, listens to, or watches, and in what language, he argues, some see an economic behemoth with a trillion-dollar trade surplus, a modern navy bigger than ours and global aspirations, all under the firm control of Xi Jinping. Chinese diaspora observers see a tottering tyranny, its economy crumbling, ordinary people sullen and rebellious, and Xi under challenge by a resurgent reformist movement.

Which is it and where is China going? Based on his study of Hu Yaobang’s life and elite politics in Beijing, Suettinger suggests a weakened Xi Jinping might be facing a situation similar to that of Hua Guofeng in 1980-81.

Robert Lee Suettinger is a historian of contemporary elite politics in the People’s Republic of China. He recently completed a biography of Hu Yaobang (1915-1989), General Secretary and Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party of China, published by Harvard University Press, under a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation.

Suettinger was a Senior Advisor and Consultant at the Stimson Center, Analytic Director at CENTRA Technology Inc., a Senior Policy Analyst at RAND and a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He retired from US government service in 1998, after nearly 24 years in the intelligence and foreign policy bureaucracies.

He joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1975, and spent his entire career in the analysis of Asian affairs. After several years as an analyst and manager in CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, he was assigned as Director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Subsequently, he served for five years as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia on the National Intelligence Council.

Beginning in March 1994, Suettinger was Director of Asian Affairs on the National Security Council, where he assisted National Security Advisors Anthony Lake and Samuel R. Berger in the development of American policy toward East Asia. He returned to the NIC as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia in October 1997. Suettinger holds an M.A. from Columbia University and a B.A. from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He served in the U.S. Army in the then Republic of Vietnam in 1969-70.

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International Security and What’s Next for U.S. Strategy in the Indo-Pacific: A Discussion with Dr. Ely Ratner
2026-03-25 12:00 - 13:30 | Malkin Penthouse, Littauer Building, 79 JFK St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Ely Ratner, Principal, The Marathon Initiative; Senior Advisor, Clarion Strategies; Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, 2021-2025 Respondent: Mark Wu, Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese StudiesModerator: Edward Cunningham, Director of Ash Center China Programs and the Asia Energy and Sustainability Initiative.

The Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia invites you to a discussion focusing on the future of international security and what’s next for U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific with Dr. Ely Ratner. Mark Wu, Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University, will serve as a respondent. This conversation will be moderated by Edward Cunningham, Director of Ash Center China Programs and the Asia Energy and Sustainability Initiative.

Ely Ratner is a Principal at The Marathon Initiative and a Senior Advisor at Clarion Strategies. He served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs from 2021-2025 and as Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden from 2015-2017. He has also worked in the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs at the State Department and in the U.S. Senate as a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Outside of government, Dr. Ratner has worked as the Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security, a Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and as an Associate Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. He received his B.A. from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs and earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lunch will be served. This event will be recorded.

This event is open to Harvard ID holders only and registration is required.

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How US Internet Optimism Turned to AI Alarm with China
2026-03-25 12:00 - 13:30 | WCC 3013, Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Graham Webster, Stanford University

US thinkers once looked to the future of Internet technology in China with dreams of liberalization. China and the US co-built and jointly profited from the 2000s digital economy and the smartphone revolution, yet in the 2010s both countries’ governments became increasingly anxious about their vulnerability and interdependence in the digital sphere. By 2020, anxieties combined with trade conflict, Covid recriminations, and AI futurism, cementing a rivalry mindset that today shapes partial decoupling and conditions of continued interconnection. This talk traces how US officials and thinkers acted on their visions of the future, and how reality intervened.

Graham Webster is a lecturer and research scholar in the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance at Stanford University, where he leads the DigiChina Project. He specializes in technology policy and development in China and US-China relations. His reporting and commentary has appeared in WIRED, Foreign Affairs, and the MIT Technology Review, among others. Graham was previously a senior fellow and lecturer at Yale Law School, where he was responsible for the Paul Tsai China Center’s Track 2 dialogues between the United States and China. In the past, he wrote a CNET News blog on technology and society from Beijing, worked at the Center for American Progress, and taught East Asian politics at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs. Graham holds a master’s degree in East Asian studies from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in journalism and international studies from Northwestern University. He is based in Oakland, California.

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The Death of Strategic Ambiguity: Middle Power Survival in the New U.S.-China Cold War
2026-03-26 16:30 - 18:00 | CGIS South, Room S050, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Seong-Hyon Lee, Senior Fellow, George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations; Associate, Harvard University Asia Center

Moderator: Andrew Erickson, Visiting Scholar, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University; Professor of Strategy, China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College

Registration appreciated for planning purposes.

For decades, East Asian middle powers like South Korea thrived by navigating a delicate geopolitical balance—relying on the United States for security architecture while depending on China for economic prosperity. However, as the “New Cold War” intensifies, this era of “riding two boats” has abruptly ended. Faced with shifting U.S. alliance postures, escalating technology and trade frictions, and the pressing realities of nuclear deterrence on the Korean Peninsula, nations can no longer afford strategic ambiguity. This talk will explore how middle powers are being forced into strategic clarity, recalibrating their foreign policies to survive a prolonged rivalry between Washington and Beijing. Drawing on recent developments in international security, we will examine the difficult choices ahead for East Asia’s most critical geopolitical fault lines.

Dr. Seong-Hyon Lee is a Senior Fellow at the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations and an Associate at the Harvard University Asia Center. He is the author of The New Cold War: U.S.-China Rivalry and the Future of Global Power (2025). He specializes in U.S.-China strategic competition, East Asian security, and North Korea and Korean Peninsula geopolitics.

https://asiacenter.harvard.edu/events/death-strategic-ambiguity-middle-power-survival-new-us-china-cold-war

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Rethinking the Global Order: Latin America, China, and the U.S. Amid Transforming Economic and Political Paradigms
2026-03-27 10:15 - 12:45 | CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium (S010), 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Keynote: Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar, President, Carnegie Endowment for International PeaceModerator: Marisol Argueta de Barillas, Head of Latin America; Member of the Executive Committee, World Economic Forum

Panelists:Enrique Dussel Peters, Professor, Graduate School of Economics, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)Mark Wu, Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University; Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law, Harvard Law SchoolPedro Henrique Batista Barbosa, Diplomat, Brazilian Ministry of Foreign AffairsRebeccca Bill Chavez, President and CEO, Inter-American DialogueClick for more information and registration

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Against Erasure: Uyghur Poems, Imprisoned Souls, and the Act of Resistance
2026-03-27 16:00 - 17:30 | CGIS South, Room S050, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Aziz Isa Elkun, University of London

In the face of the Chinese government1s systemic efforts to silence the Uyghur people, the written word becomes a profound act of resistance. Against this backdrop of cultural erasure, two recently pubIished English-language poetry anthologies – Uyghur Poems and Imprisoned Souls, stand as vital testaments to love, survival, and defiance. These works serve as both a sanctuary for a threatened identity and a resonant cry for justice. Together, they form more than a mere collection of verses; they are a living archive for both the present and the future. They prove that while bodies may be confined and traditions targeted for erasure, the human pulse of love and collective memory remains indestructible. As enduring evidence of the Uyghur spirit, these works carry a cultural legacy to the next generation and awaken the consciousness of humanity as a whole, offering a glimmer of hope for the future.

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Urban China Lecture featuring Chris Courtney — Defrosting the Deep History of Chinese Cold Chains
2026-03-31 09:00 - 10:30 | Presented via Zoom
Zoom Meeting link

Speaker: Chris Courtney, Associate Professor of Modern Chinese History, University of Durham, UK.Cold chains are a vital component of modern cities. Most histories trace their origins to the advent of the ice trade in the nineteenth century. This paper argues that cold chains have been around a lot longer. In China, they have been used to provision cities for around a thousand years. Later, the British consciously emulated these Chinese infrastructural arrangements, using them as the inspiration for their own cold chains. This paper continues by describing how industrial cold chains allowed treaty port foreigners in China to manufacture temperate lifestyles in tropical climes, while also amassing great fortunes by exporting frozen protein. After this system was disrupted by war and revolution, the Chinese Communist government struggled to rebuild their infrastructural capacity, and had to rely on ersatz solutions, such as cave cold storages. This paper concludes by exploring the refrigerator revolution, when cold chains were reinvented in 1980s China.

Chris Courtney is Associate Professor of Modern Chinese History at the University of Durham, UK. He a social and environmental historian who focusses upon the city of Wuhan and its hinterland. He has published on the history of hazards such as floods and fires, including the monograph The Nature of Disaster in China. In his more recent research, he has examined the history of extreme heat, from a technological, medical, and social perspective. He is currently writing a monograph entitled Wuhan: City at the End of Empires.

Join Zoom Meeting: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97955535212

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Butchered Rooms: Precarity, Resilience, and the Politics of Informal Housing in Post-Handover Hong Kong
2026-03-31 11:30 - 13:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Ruby YS LAI, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2025-26Chair/Discussant: Ya-Wen Lei, Professor of Sociology, Harvard University

In the past decades, the growing housing crisis has destabilized individual housing tenure and exacerbated an everyday sense of insecurity, especially among low-income renters in megacities, where housing costs continuously soar under increased financialization and commodification. How do individuals and families build a home while facing heightened precariousness? This talk argues that housing precarity is an outcome of inequality resulting from the macro political-economic structure rather than a condition of poverty, by focusing on one of the world’s most unaffordable housing markets, Hong Kong, and its infamous subdivided units, also called ‘butchered rooms’—a form of informal housing unit subdivided from an entire compartment, characterized by an extremely tiny size, with a median as small as 11m?. Drawing on years of ethnographic and participatory fieldwork and policy analysis, the talk first illustrates the homemaking strategies through which occupants of butchered rooms navigate the spatio-material constraints of their built environment and the processes of resilience building. The second part of the talk provides a critical analysis of the housing policy regime in Hong Kong during the post-1997 period and unravels the political-economic structures that necessitate the invisible labor of occupants that buffers the consequences of housing inequality resulting from the city’s neoliberal housing regime and developmental urban governance, which resonate with housing crises in urban areas across the globe.

Butchered Rooms: Precarity, Resilience, and the Politics of Informal Housing in Post-Handover Hong Kong

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Fairbank Center Visiting Scholar Presentations
2026-03-31 15:00 - 16:30 | CGIS South, Room S153, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Please join us for research presentations by two Fairbank Center Visiting Scholars:

Tommy Tse, Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies, University of AmsterdamChina as data colonizer? Rethinking cultural production, cultural mediation, and consumer agency on Kenyan and Chinese e-commerce platforms

Is China becoming a new “data coloniser” in the Global South? As Chinese digital platforms expand across Africa, debates about infrastructure, power, and data have become increasingly urgent. This talk examines how these dynamics unfold in everyday life through the case of Chinese-invested e-commerce platforms operating in Kenya’s fashion market. Drawing on focus groups and platform walkthrough research, I explore how cultural production, mediation, and consumer practices are shaped by different platform infrastructures and algorithmic logics. Rather than framing Chinese platforms simply as instruments of domination, the talk highlights how users negotiate, adapt, and sometimes resist these systems—revealing more complex forms of cultural exchange and consumer agency within emerging South–South digital economies.

Bowen Sun, Lecturer in the Department of Environmental Design, Shanghai Business SchoolManuscript Handbooks of Vernacular Carpenters from Early Twentieth-Century South ChinaIn the field of local document studies, new materials continue to be discovered and organized. By sharing a selection of manuscripts collected from vernacular carpenters in South China, this talk engages in an open-ended discussion of how these materials can be defined, how the knowledge they embody may be interpreted, and how textual practices shape the functioning of vernacular construction knowledge within local social contexts.

Tommy Tse is Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and currently a Visiting Fellow at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. His research examines platform economies, digital and creative labour, consumer culture, and global cultural industries. He leads the ERC-funded project China Africa Fashion Power, a five-year ethnographic study of fashion and cultural economies across Asia and Africa. More information: https://www.tommyhltse.com

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Harvard Asia Law Conference II
2026-04-01 09:30 - 2026-04-02 19:30 | WCC, Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
more information

Please join us for HALS 2026 Conference, which will take place at the WCC on Harvard Law School Campus April 1st & 2nd. This year, panels will feature topics like AI regulations across Asia, the future of US-China trade relations, practicing in-house at multinational companies, and more. Please click here for details on the full agenda, panel locations, and programming.

Please contact hals@mail.law.harvard.edu with any questions.

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