• The Mining Industry, Caravan Transportation and Ethnic Mobilization in southwest China from the 17th to 19th Century

    Speaker: Prof. Ma Jianxiong (Hong Kong U. of Science and Technology; HYI Visiting Scholar) Chair/discussant: Prof. Michael Szonyi (Director, Harvard University Fairbank Center) Harvard-Yenching Institute Lunchtime Talk This talk will review the history of silver and copper mines on the borderland between Yunnan and Burma, in particular the social organization of miners in remote mountainous […]

  • Working with Looted Manuscripts: A Vindication of the Peking University Han Bamboo Strips

    Over the last two decades, remarkable collections of Warring States, Qin and Han manuscripts have been purchased on the behalf of major academic institutions in China, offering exciting new materials that have the potential to dramatically impact the study of early China. By the same token, these collections also present a great risk to our […]

  • The World of Universities in the 21st Century – Two Case Studies: UC-Berkeley & Hong Kong University

    Lower Level Library, Robinson Hall 35 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

    William Kirby, Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies, Harvard University Commentators: Charles S. Maier, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History, Harvard University Aniket De, PhD Candidate in History, Harvard University

  • Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China

    CGIS Knafel K262 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

    Speaker: Julian Gewirtz '13  Julian Gewirtz will discuss his forthcoming book, Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China, which Harvard University Press will publish in January. Writing for the New Yorker, Evan Osnos summarizes: "The book tells the little-known story of how Chinese intellectuals and leaders, facing a ruined economy at […]

  • The Exile and Diplomacy of the 13th Dalai Lama (1904-1912): Tibet’s Encounters with the US and Japan

    Speaker: Prof. Kobayashi Ryosuke (Toyo Bunko; HYI Visiting Scholar) Chair/discussant: Prof. Leonard van der Kuijp (Harvard University) Harvard-Yenching Institute Lunch Talk This talk will show how Tibet attempted to participate in the international community around the demise of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 by focusing on its relationships with the US and Japan. The sojourns of […]

  • Beijing Faces its Periphery: Update on Hong Kong and Taiwan

    Speaker: Dr. Richard Bush, Brookings Institution: Senior Fellow, the Richard H. Armacost Chair, the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies,  Director of  the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, and Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, John L. Thornton China Center;  former Chairman and Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan Critical Issues […]

  • What Next? Trump and Asia

    CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium (S010) 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, United States

    Join the Harvard University Asia-related Centers for the first in a new series on the Asia-Pacific during Trump's presidency.

  • The Buddha and the Dragon Princess in the Lotus Sutra — for deciphering the Devadatta frontispiece in the Heike Tokyo set

    Speaker: Ryūichi Abé, Harvard University The Heike Nokyo is a sumptuously produced set of Buddhist scriptural handscrolls that was commissioned by the Heike military aristocratic clan and offered to the Goddess of Itsukushima, the clan’s tutelary divinity, in the mid-twelfth century.  The set is arguably the most sublime example of illustrated and decorated Buddhist scriptures in Japanese history.  The Heike […]

  • The East-Asian Peace: Can it Last?

    CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, United States

    Speaker: The Honorable Börje Ljunggren, Former Asia Center Fellow; former Swedish Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China and Vietnam Critical Issues Confronting China Seminar Series; co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the Harvard University Asia Center  

  • Long-Term Trend and Spatial Pattern of PM2.5-Induced Premature Mortality in China

    Pierce Hall 100F 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA, United States

    Speaker: WANG Haikun, Associate Professor, School of Environment, Nanjing University Sponsored by the China Project, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. With rapid economic growth, China has witnessed increasingly frequent and severe haze and smog episodes over the past decade, posing serious health impacts to the Chinese population, especially those in densely populated […]

  • The Indian Yogācāra Scholar Sthiramati and the Works Attributed to Him

    1 Bow St., Room 317 1 Bow St., Cambridge, MA, United States

    Speaker: Jowita Kramer, Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich This paper focuses on the scriptural corpus of Sthiramati, a pivotal scholar in the development of Indian Yogācāra thought in the 6th century. So far Sthiramati’s work has received far less attention from modern scholars than the treatises of other Yogācāra authors like Asaṅga or Vasubandhu—probably because of the perception of Sthiramati as […]