CeMEAS

Lecture Series 2018: China and International Order: What Order? Which Order?
2018-05-15 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Berlin) | VG, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 7, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Lecture Series 2018:
China and International Order: What Order? Which Order?
Alastair Iain Johnston (Harvard University)
Tuesday, May 15, 6pm (c.t.), VG 3.103
Abstract:
The discourse about China’s challenge to the liberal world order assumes that such an order exists. This talk argues that there are instead multiple orders in different arenas (military, trade, finance, information, environment, among others), and that there are tensions within and between these orders. China supports some of these orders, wants to reform others, and opposes elements of others. We need new and more sophisticated ways of measuring order and describing the relationship of states to these orders.
Short Bio:
Alastair Iain Johnston (PhD University of Michigan, 1993) is the Gov. James Albert Noe and Linda Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs in the Government Department at Harvard University. He has written on socialization theory, identity and political behavior, and strategic culture, mostly with application to the study of East Asian international relations and Chinese foreign policy. Johnston is the author of Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton 1995) and Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980-2000 (Princeton University Press, 2008), and is co-editor of Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (Routledge 1999), New Directions in the Study of China’s Foreign Policy (Stanford 2006), Crafting Cooperation: Regional Institutions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge 2007), Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists (Cambridge 2009), and Perception and Misperception in American and Chinese Views of the Other (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2015).
Information from Harvard University.
Primary Organizer: CeMEAS
Co-Hosts: Department of East Asian Studies, Department of Political Science, Global and Transregional Studies Platform
Sponsors: Academic Confucius Institute (Qin Yaqing & Liu Kang), Department of East Asian Studies, Department of Political Science, CeMEAS

Design & Poster: CeMEAS
Image: U.S. Pacific Fleet, 170305-N-BL637-053, CC BY-SA 2.0.,https://flic.kr/p/Rv9DKa

Lecture Series 2018: Chinese Exceptionalism: A Research Agenda
2018-04-24 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Berlin) | VG, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 7, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Lecture Series 2018:
Chinese Exceptionalism: A Research Agenda
Liu Kang (Duke University)
Tuesday, April 24, 6pm (c.t.), VG 3.103
Abstract:
This lecture explores the emergent Chinese exceptionalism in order to search for a possible research agenda from interdisciplinary approaches. It will focus on modern times from Mao to the present, especially the ideological formations of Sinicization of Marxism (Chinese Marxism or Mao Zedong Thought),and “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” (from Deng to Xi). To begin the research, we need to address 1) Chinese exceptionalism under the rubrics of international politics; 2) Chinese exceptionalism as an ideology, or value system; 3) cultural and historical roots of Chinese exceptionalism, and 4) implications for Xi Jinping’s global strategy.
Short bio:
Liu Kang is Professor of Chinese Studies, and Director of Duke Program of Research on China at Duke University. Professor Liu is Elected Member of Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe) since 2015. He is the author of twelve books, and written widely in scholarly journals in both English and Chinese. In addition, He frequently contributes in the forms of op-eds, interviews, reviews, to American and Chinese print media and the internet media, on issues ranging from contemporary Chinese media and culture, globalization, to Marxism and aesthetics.

Primary Organizer: CeMEAS
Co-Hosts: Department of East Asian Studies, Department of Political Science, Global and Transregional Studies Platform
Sponsors: Academic Confucius Institute (Qin Yaqing & Liu Kang), Department of East Asian Studies, Department of Political Science, CeMEAS

Image: theo phontes, Opening in Great Wall, CC BY-SA 2.0., https://flic.kr/p/bBDWRT

Lecture Series 2018: What Makes a Superpower? New Perspectives on China's Rise
2018-04-24 08:00 - 2018-06-12 17:00 (Europe/Berlin) | KWZ, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen, 37073, Germany
CeMEAS Lecture Series Summer Term 2018:
China in a Global World
Conveners: Sarah Eaton & Katja Pessl

Title: What Makes a Superpower? New Perspectives on China’s Rise

Time & Place: 18:00-20:00, VG 3.103
Liu Kang (Duke University)
Tuesday, April 24
Chinese Exceptionalism: A Research Agenda
Iain Johnston (Harvard University)
Tuesday, May 15
China and International Order: What Order? Which Order?
Qin Yaqing (China Foreign Affairs University)
Tuesday, May 29
Chinese culture and foreign policy decision (中国文化与外交决策)
Todd Hall (Oxford University)
Tuesday, 5 June
The Senkaku Islands Dispute: A MacGruffin?
Saori Katada (University of Southern California)
Tuesday, 12 June
The BRICS and Collective Financial Statecraft

Primary Organizer: CeMEAS
Co-Hosts: Department of East Asian Studies, Department of Political Science, Global and Transregional Studies Platform
Sponsors: Academic Confucius Institute (Qin Yaqing & Liu Kang), Department of East Asian Studies, Department of Political Science, CeMEAS

Design: CeMEAS
Image: VR_Man, CommScope, 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), https://flic.kr/p/V6mWt7

Film Screening: The VaChina Monologues
2018-04-18 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Berlin) | ZHG
Film Screening: The VaChina Monologues
Wednesday, April 18, 18:00-20:00, ZHG 002
Moderator: Katja Pessl

Fan Popo’s 2013 short documentary explores how ‘The Vagina Monologues’ (1996), the iconic yet controversial play by Eve Ensler, has become an empowering tool for feminist and women’s groups all over China. The first theatrical performance in the PRC was translated and directed by Professor Ai Xiaoming of Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou) in 2003; since then enactments of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ (in Chinese ‘来自阴道’ lit. ‘from the vagina’), at times banned and partly censored, have taken over university campuses, theatres, cafes, villages, streets and public transport.
(Source:shadesofnoir.org.uk)

About the director:
Fan Popo is a queer filmmaker, writer and activist. Born in 1985, he graduated from the Beijing Film Academy. He published “Happy Together: Complete Record of a Hundred Queer Films”. His documentary works include: New Beijing, New Marriage, Mama Rainbow, The VaChina Monologues and other works. He has participated in international film festivals in Taipei, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, Mumbai and other places. In 2012 he received the Prism Prize of the 22nd Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and was invited to join the jury of MixCopenhagen in 2014. Fan Popo now serves as a committee member of the Beijing Queer Film Festival and is a board member of Beijing LGBT Centre.

Image: public poster

Voices of Struggle: LGBTQ & Feminist Activism in China and Beyond
2018-04-17 13:30 - 18:15 (Europe/Berlin) | Alten Mensa, Wilhelmsplatz 3, Gӧttingen, 37073, Germany
Voices of Struggle: LGBTQ & Feminist Activism in China and Beyond
Voices of Struggle explores the complex entanglements between activism and academia in transnational perspective. What does it mean to be an engaged or activist scholar today? How should we think about the connections/separations between the two spheres of activism and academia? And how can activists and academics best combine their strengths to effect change? In what ways are deepening transnational connections re-shaping the practice of activism around the globe? This two day event brings together leading scholars and activists to discuss these questions in relation to the development of feminism and LGBTQ activism in China and beyond.
Event is free to the public. No registration is needed.
Workshop: April 17, 13:30 – 18:15
Venue: Emmy-Noether-Saal, Tagungs- und Veranstaltungshaus Alte Mensa, Wilhelmsplatz 3, Göttingen
Participants：
Bao Hongwei (University of Nottingham)
Harriett Evans (University of Westminster)
Li Tingting (Activist, London)
Kimberley Manning (Concorida University)

Film Screening: April 18, 18:00 – 20:00
Location: ZHG 002
Vachina Monologues 来自阴道
FanPopo|28’|2013
Documentary China
Language: Mandarin
Subtitles: English
Participants:
Bao Hongwei (University of Nottingham)
Fan Popo (Filmmaker, Berlin)
Li Tingting (Activist, London)

Program:
A first roundtable session, featuring Harriet Evans (Westminster) and Kimberley Manning (Concordia), explores the history and development of feminism in relation to politics and state power in China. Evans is an expert on gender and sexuality in China and is the author of many studies on these topics including The Subject of Gender: Daughters and Mothers in Urban China (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007). Manning specializes in Chinese politics, women and politics, and the rights of transgender children and youth. She is the author of the forthcoming book Revolutionary Attachments: Party Families and the Gendered Origins of Chinese State Power” (Cornell University Press, 2019)
A second session turns to China’s recent feminist awakening and the struggle for LGBTQ rights and will feature the inspirational activist Li Tinging/“Maizi” and Bao Hongwei (Nottingham). Li is one of China’s famous ‘Feminist Five’ who made headlines around the world in March 2015 when they were arrested and detained in Beijing for planning to hand out stickers about sexual harassment on International Women’s Day. Bao is an expert on LGBTQ activism in China and author of a new book on the topic, Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Politics in Postsocialist China (NIAS Press, 2018).
An evening film screening on Wednesday, 18 April will feature the documentary The VaChina Monologues, a reflection on performances of Eve Ensler’s play around China since its first staging in Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou) in 2003. The director Fan Popo will join us for a discussion of his film.

Click here for more details.

Past Event Highlights
2018-02-01 08:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Berlin)
In the past winter term CeMEAS has organized the Lecture Series “Social Policy in China: Retrospect and Prospect” and co-organized the OAS Film Cycle “Periphery at the Centre: China’ s Borders and Frontiers”.
In September we organized an international workshop “Manchu in Global History:A Research Language for Qing Historians”.

We are looking forward to share with you more exciting events.

Lecture: Sovereignty, Natural Law, and the Ironies of Decolonization: India and the Tokyo Trial
2018-01-29 16:00 - 18:00 (Europe/Berlin) | Zentrale Einrichtung für Sprachen und Schlüsselqualifikationen der Universität Göttingen, Goßlerstraße 10, 37073 Göttingen, 37073, Germany
Sovereignty, Natural Law, and the Ironies of Decolonization: India and the Tokyo Trial
Prof.Milinda Banerjee( Ludwig-Maximilian University )
Monday, 29.01.2018, 16:00(c.t.) – 18:00, ZESS, AP26
Abstract:
Is the demand for codified international criminal justice antithetical to the demand for agonistic decolonization of global political, military, and economic power? Or can the establishment of global norms of justice be made compatible with, and even grounded upon, anti-colonial and democratic interventions? By analysing Indian involvement in the Tokyo Trial (1946-48), this paper foregrounds some of the key complexities at stake in the dialectics between global norm-building and anti-colonial agonism. While existing scholarship on the Tokyo Trial has mainly dwelt upon legal and political history, I draw upon methodological debates in the nascent field of global intellectual history to sharply focus on the tense relation between sovereignty and natural law which mediated discussions on justice in relation to colonialism, in the Tokyo moment as well as in its long aftermath. I give particular attention to the dissenting Indian judge at the trial, Radhabinod Pal (1886-1967), and contextualize his controversial judgment in relation to (anti-) colonial politics and justice, not merely in relation to the Japanese Empire – and the decades-old Indian engagement with Japanese models of sovereignty – but also in relation to British India, Dutch Indonesia, French Indochina, and Korea. In the process, I relate the dynamics of the trial to transregional flows in legal-moral vocabularies and the emergence of international legal institutions, including, most notably, the post-war International Law Commission. Simultaneously, I relate Pal to other Indian actors, such as Agent General Girja Shankar Bajpai (1891-1954) and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), who related (anti-) imperial anxieties to the politics of the Tokyo Trial. Further, I show how the trial linked the paradoxes of India’s decolonization to foreign policy debates and questions about ‘race’ in relation to the United States and the United Kingdom. Ultimately, I theorize about how the Tokyo Trial can shed novel conceptual light on the tortuous ironies involved in decolonization processes, as regimes of sovereignty – and sovereign violence – were combated, translated, and expropriated across Asia through transimperial and transnational entanglements, often with haunting long-term consequences.

Design & Image Selection: CeMEAS
Image: The International Military Tribunal for the Far East

Lecture Series: The Welfare Regime Within and Beyond Borders: The Openness and Closedness of the Chinese Social Policy
2018-01-23 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Berlin) | Theologicum, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 2, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
The Welfare Regime Within and Beyond Borders:
The Openness and Closedness of the Chinese Social Policy

Prof. Liu Tao
(University of Duisburg-Essen)
Tuesday, 23.01.2018, 18:00 (c.t.) – 20:00, T0.136
Abstract:
The functional operation of conventional Chinese welfare regime was closely linked to institutionally created forms of discrepancies and borders entrenching the status differences between different social classes as well as among welfare clients from different social spaces (e.g. rural or urban areas). Since the Millennium an unprecedented and fast expanding social policy in the Chinese history has softened the welfare boundaries of classes, regions and functionally segregated welfare spaces substantially even the welfare class ‘borders’ won’t entirely disappear in the short term. A conceptual notion of ‘incomplete universalism’ contributes to outlining the main trends of social policy development in contemporary China: on the one hand, residents from different origins are increasingly considered as national social citizens; on the other hand, the notion of a national social citizenship and its concrete implementation are heavily constrained by the uneven institutional welfare arrangements created in the past.

Design & Image Selection: CeMEAS
Image: Matthias Ripp, The colors of the street, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://flic.kr/p/TjfNZv

The 12th East Asia Research Salon
2018-01-16 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Berlin) | Kulturwissenschaftliches Zentrum, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Theorizing the Current Global Order in the Era of Globalization, Regional Integration and the Resurgence of Nationalism:
Global China, Regional EU, and National US?
Xiao (Alvin) Yang, University of Kassel
Tuesday, 16.01.2018, 18:00 (c.t.) – 20:00, KWZ 0.701

Commentators
Dr. Armin Müller, University of Göttingen
Prof. Dr. Sarah Eaton, University of Göttingen

Abstract:
Why has China become the defender of globalization whereas the US, who is supposed to be the defender of globalization, has turned towards more nationalist and inward-looking direction? Moreover, why is European Union, the model for regional integration, not only facing economic, financial and migration crises, but also the crisis of the resurgence of nationalist movements within its member states? This dissertation aims to theorize the current global order after 2008 where there is an on-going contradictory and simultaneous process of globalization, regional integration and the resurgence of nationalism. It theorizes the relationships among China, the EU and the US in relation to their respective domestic conditions, with a particular focus on the bilateral Sino-American and Sino-EU relations.
Moreover, it goes beyond the European-Americano-centric international relations(IR) and global political economy (GPE) theories by bringing in non-Western IR/GPE theories. Particularly, it situates in the theoretical discourse and engages with the research programs of the emerging Chinese IR theories. It critically and systematically carries out literature review on both Western and Chinese IR/GPE theories and their respective critiques by selecting each work (e.g. journal article, book) based on a set of criteria, such as the relevance to the research questions, the level of intellectual and policy influence, and uniqueness of a theory. How these competing theories conceptualize hegemony, the relationship between a hegemonic power and a rising power, the notions of international relations and global order are compared and contrasted and then synthesized in order to shed light upon the current global order. Furthermore, it systematically reveals the underlying epistemological, ontological, methodological and historical assumptions of these theories to illustrate how and why they interpret the same phenomena differently as well as to bridge these assumptions to make fruitful analyses.
To test these competing theories, a set of hypotheses are generated from their respective theoretical implications and predictions. Subsequently, these hypotheses are tested on different institutional dimensions by critically examining the foreign policy of China, EU, and the US, as well as applying set theory to analyze their respective bilateral and multilateral trade arrangements and security configurations. They are further substantiated by macro indices, such as flows and trends of trade, investment, capital, and currency. Furthermore, China’s Belt and Road initiative (B&R), formerly named as One Belt One Road (OBOR), is chosen to be the main case study. Finally, this dissertation aims to construct and develop a holistic theoretical and conceptual framework that encompasses politico-economic and socio-cultural dimensions to theorize the current global order.
About the presenter:
Xiao (Alvin) Yang is currently a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Kassel in Germany. His dissertation aims to theorize the current global order by focusing on international relations among and within East Asia, Europe and North America where there are on-going tensions among globalization, regional integration and the resurgence of nationalism. He holds a master degree in Chinese European Economics and Business from the Berlin School of Economics and Law and a master degree in International Business from the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in China. He also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music with honours at York University in Canada. Furthermore, he studied political science, business management and anthropology at Stockholm University, explored sociology at University of Toronto, studied German at Heidelberg Universität, Humboldt Universität and München Universität, as well as French at Université Jean Monnet in France, Western University at Trois-Pistoles and Laval Université in Quebec.

If you want to learn more about Alvin Yang’s PhD project, you can contact us for an extended abstract of his work.
cemeas@uni-goettingen.de

Lecture： China and the World in 1900: Stories of the Boxers and the First Global War
2017-12-13 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Berlin) | Kulturwissenschaftliches Zentrum, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
China and the World in 1900: Stories of the Boxers and the First Global War
Prof. Jeffrey Wasserstrom (UC Irvine)
Wednesday, 13.12.2017, 18:00 (c.t.) – 20:00,
KWZ 0.609
Abstract:
This illustrated lecture, entitled “China and the World in 1900: Stories of the Boxers and the First Global War,” revisits the anti-Christian uprising and international invasion that convulsed the Qing Empire during the final year of the nineteenth century, paying particular attention to the varied ways these events were understood in different places at the time and the diverse kinds of stories that have been told about them since. As different as the world of 1900 is from our own, especially when it comes to China’s strength now as opposed to weakness then, we can see in the Boxer uprising and the response by an Allied Army made up of soldiers from Germany, Japan, Britain, the United States and four other nations and empires many intimations of many things to come in the troubled twentieth century that was about to start and in our own anxious age.
Short bio:
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, who received his master’s from Harvard and his PhD. From Berkeley, is Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine, where he edits the Journal of Asian Studies (term ending June 2018) and holds courtesy affiliations with the Law School and program in Literary Journalism. He has written five books, including Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China (1991) and Eight Juxtapositions: China through Imperfect Analogies from Mark Twain to Manchukuo (Penguin 2016). He has edited or co-edited several others, including, most recently, The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China (2016). In addition to writing for academic journals, he has contributed to many general interest venues, among them the New York Times, the TLS, and the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB). He is an advising editor at LARB and an academic editor of its associated China Channel.

Design & Image Selection: CeMEAS
Image: ralph repo， Qing Court Return, The Emperess Dowerger [1902] George E. Morrison [RESTORED], CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://flic.kr/p/7cW6Dp

Cancelled: Who cares about inequality in China? Public attitudes toward inequalities in access to health care
2017-12-12 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Berlin) | Theologicum, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 2, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Who cares about inequality in China?
Public attitudes toward inequalities in access to health care

Prof. Jane Duckett(University of Glasgow)
Tuesday, 12.12.2017, 18:00 (c.t.) – 20:00, T0.136
We are very sorry to announce that the lecture is cancelled!

About the letuerer:
Jane Duckett is Edward Caird Chair of Politics, International Dean (East Asia), and Director of the Scottish Centre for China Research at the University of Glasgow. She is also Guest Professor at Nankai University (Tianjin, China). In 2012 she received the Lord Provost of Glasgow Education Award. In 2014 she was elected President of the British Association for Chinese Studies. In 2016 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
Prof Duckett’s early research on the Chinese state under market reform included a book-length study, The Entrepreneurial State in China (Routledge, 1998). It explained state business activities as the outcome of fiscal and staffing constraints on officials in an institutional context of poorly defined property rights. Jane also (with colleague Bill Miller) made a comparative study of public attitudes to openness in East Asia and Eastern Europe, published as The Open Economy and its Enemies (CUP, 2006). Her current research is concerned with the politics of China’s social policy making and implementation. She argues through studies across a range of social policies (on local social welfare financing, health insurance, poverty and unemployment), that the politics behind them and their enormous redistributive consequences make them central to the Chinese state’s marketising project. Her monograph, The Chinese State’s Retreat from Health: Policy and the Politics of Retrenchment (Routledge, hdbk 2011; pbk 2013) draws on comparative political theory to explain the Chinese state’s retrenchment in health care provision. She has also co-edited (with Beatriz Carrillo), China’s Changing Welfare Mix: Local Perspectives (Routledge, 2011), a book that takes a local perspective on China’s evolving social welfare provision. She has recently published papers in Health Policy and Planning and Health Expectations that draw on a project to survey Chinese public opinion on health care.
(Information from The University of Glasgow, School of Social & Political Sciences)

Design & Image Selection: CeMEAS
Image: ReSurge International， doctor checking in patient，CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://flic.kr/p/3nrMwy

Lecture Series: Poverty Alleviation as an Instrument of Technical Governance in Rural China
2017-12-07 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Berlin) | Kulturwissenschaftliches Zentrum, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Poverty Alleviation as an Instrument of Technical Governance in Rural China
Prof. Xiong Yuegen (Peking University)
Thursday, 07.12.2017, 18:00 (c.t.) – 20:00, KWZ 0.602
Abstract:
In the past decades, China has achieved a great success in poverty reduction by helping more than 800 million of poor farmers out of poverty trap. However, Chinese government has made a series of serious efforts on social policy implementation in rural areas, poverty as a problematic persistent issue is still perplexing owing to institutional constraints and policy failure. In 2015, the Party and central government launched a new national campaign entitled the Targeted Poverty Alleviation Programme aiming to eradicate the problem of poverty in rural areas by 2020. In this lecture, I will mainly discuss the following issues: First, how does this national campaign on poverty reduction in the new era differ from the previous ones? Second, what is the main impact of the targeted poverty reduction programme on the farmers’ life and local government? Third, what are the main limitations of the top-down model of poverty reduction programme in the centralized regime and its implications for the socio-economic development in future in China. Based on the field research conducted in Jiangxi Province, the author will link the empirical data with theoretical interpretation on the ongoing social changes in the country.
Bio of the Speaker:
Yuegen Xiong is Professor and Director, The Centre for Social Policy Research (CSPR) in the Department of Sociology at Peking University, China. He is the author of Needs, Reciprocity and Shared Function: Policy and Practice of Elderly Care in Urban China ( Shanghai Renmin Press, 2008 )and Social Policy: Theories and Analytical Approaches ( Renmin University Press, 2009 ) . He was the British Academy KC Wong Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford during November 2002- September 2003, the Fellow at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study (HWK), Delmonhorst, Germany during December 2003- February 2004 and the JSPS Fellow at the University of Tokyo in October, 2005, Visiting Professor in the Department of Social Sciences & Humanities, Jacobs University Bremen from November, 2015 to December, 2015, Germany. In the past years, he has published extensively in the field of social policy, comparative welfare regimes, social work, NGOs and civil society. He is the editorial member of Asian Social Work and Policy Review (Wiley), Asian Education and Development Studies (Emerald) and the British Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (UK). He was the faculty of 483rd Salzburg Global Seminar on “ Economic Growth and Social Protection in Asia ” held in Austria during 7th-12th November, 2011.

Design & Image Selection: CeMEAS
Image: Samuel Vigier， Rural China, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://flic.kr/p/c3ix1b

Sustainable International Agricultural Development
2017-12-07 09:00 - 2017-12-09 17:00 (Europe/Berlin) | Alten Mensa, Wilhelmsplatz 3, Gӧttingen, 37073, Germany
2017 University of Göttingen-Kyoto University Workshop on “Sustainable International Agricultural Development”

Dec. 07-09, 2017, Göttingen
Venue: Alten Mensa, Wilhelmsplatz 3, Göttingen

Lists of Presenters
Kyoto University
Prof. Motoki Akitsu (Rural Sociology)
Prof. Chieko Umetsu (Environmental Economics and Development Economics)
Ms. Erina SETO-SUH
Ms. Lin-Jung CHIU
Mr. Masao FUKUTOMI
Mr. Makoto Kuroda
University of Goettingen
Prof. Bernhard Bruemmer (Agricultural market analysis)
Prof. Claudia Neu (Rural Sociology)
Prof. Xiaohua Yu (Agricultural Economics)
Prof. Fabian Froese (Human Resource Management in Faculty of Economic Sciences)
Dr. Dirk Augustin (Experimental Farmer Manager, Uni. Goettingen )
Dr. Ulf Roemer (Research Fellow, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Uni. Goettingen)
Ms. Eva Hasiner
Mr. Tahir Mahmood
Mr. Henning Schaak
Mr. Yuquan Chen

For more details please visit the webpage: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/2017workshop/576692.html
Click here for the workshop program https://www.cemeas.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Goettingen-Kyoto-Workshop_2017_Dec.pdf
If you are interested in participation in the workshop, please sent an email to Ms. Jana Nowakowsky （jana.nowakowsky@agr.uni-goettingen.de） for registration by the noon of Dec. 6.

Contact Information:
Prof. Xiaohua Yu, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, University of Goettingen. Room 10.121, Platz Der Goettinger Sieben 5, 37073 Goettingen,
Tel: +49-551-3919574; Email: xyu@gwdg.de
Ms. Jana Nowakowsky , Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, University of Goettingen. Room 10.121, Platz Der Goettinger Sieben 5, 37073 Goettingen,
Tel:+49-551-394883；email: jana.nowakowsky@agr.uni-goettingen.de

Lecture Series: Urbanization and Social Policy: Prospects for Social Citizenship in China
2017-11-30 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Berlin) | Kulturwissenschaftliches Zentrum, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Urbanization and Social Policy: Prospects for Social Citizenship in China
Prof. Mark Frazier
(India-China Institute, The New School)
Thursday, 30.11.2017, 18:00 (c.t.) – 20:00, KWZ 0.606
Abstract:
As numerous commentators have pointed out, China is the first country in the world to experience an ageing population without first having reached developed country status. China is indeed ‘growing old before it grows rich,’ but the meanings and significance of this demographic event are not clear. A substantial body of scholarship, generally public policy-oriented to measure and propose solutions to China’s demographic challenge, has emerged since the mid-2000s, with some observers concluding that the ageing burden will impose an insurmountable obstacle to China’s continued economic growth. Many analysts also wonder what population ageing will mean for the fiscal conditions of the Chinese government, given the demands to be placed on a still fragmented, and seemingly fragile, public pension system. Yet, will be argued in this paper, the effects of population ageing will in large part depend on questions of citizenship. Inclusion and access to basic social protections—and, by implication, exclusion from them—are debated not only in China but also in most high-income countries, many of which are ageing. In both the former and the latter, pressures from population ageing would be lessened if those now treated in law and social policy as non-citizens were to be granted access to pension and other social welfare programs (notably, healthcare) that rely on mandatory contributions from citizens.

Design & Image Selection: CeMEAS
Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Earth’s City Lights 1994, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://flic.kr/p/dywxTR

Lecture: Discovering Childhood and Paediatrics in Chinese History: Further Considerations
2017-11-28 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Berlin) | Theologicum, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 2, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Discovering Childhood and Paediatrics in Chinese History: Further Considerations
Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen
(Chinese University of Hong Kong)
28. Nov., 18:00 – 20:00, T0.136
Abstract:
As a reflection on thirty plus years of research on childhood and paediatrics in Chinese history, this lecture intends to present further concerns after a systematic review, in three parts:
First, a retrospective on the why’s and how’s of studying children and childhood in history, the conceptual definition that the Chinese case had to start up with, the categorical materials for the investigation, the basic methodological questions to conduct the study with.
Second, an in depth re-examination of the physical conditions in the beginnings of life , and the role of traditional pedestrics in the Chinese and East Asian cultural linguistic world.
Third, further considerations are offered in way of world history, interdisciplinary childhood studies, and contemporary Chinese youth culture, in this ongoing journey.

Design & Image: CeMEAS

Lecture: Gendered Religiosity: Patriarchal Structures and Women’s Agency in China
2017-11-16 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Berlin) | Kulturwissenschaftliches Zentrum, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Gendered Religiosity: Patriarchal Structures and Women’s Agency in China
Prof. Mayfair Yang (UC Santa Barbara)
16. Nov., 18:00 – 20:00, KWZ 0.602
Abstract:
This lecture will examine how social structures of power, such as patriarchal power, depend on the vicissitudes of human agency to implement their principles, opening them up to subtle shifts and reconfigurations in social practice (Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu). Traditional religiosities, whether Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, or others, are often seen to produce conservative agents of patriarchy, in both men and women. Writing about the women’s Islamic piety movement in contemporary Egypt, Saba Mahmood has criticized the narrow definition of women’s agency put forth by liberal Western feminism. She suggests that women’s agency cannot be understood or defined in terms of oppositionality, critical discourse, or rebellious acts, but must also take into account the modesty, self-effacement, and self-sacrificing ethos of pious women. Here, I will examine the non-oppositional religious agency of pious women in rural and small-town Wenzhou. Two divinities in particular, the regional deity of Chinese popular religion, known as Goddess Chen the Fourteenth, and the Buddhist mother goddess Guan Yin, inspire these women’s religious agency. However, I depart from Mahmood, who almost closes herself off from feminist inquiry, by showing how local women have, through their self-sacrifice, religious leadership, and religious transcendence, carved out a public space and role for women. In the absence of feminism, and without directly confronting or resisting patriarchal power, women’s religious agency has made a social impact and brought changes in local society.
Short bio:
Mayfair Yang received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from UC Berkeley. She has been a faculty member in the Anthropology Department at UC Santa Barbara, and is now a Professor in Religious Studies Department and East Asian Studies Department there. Yang was Director of Asian Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia, and has been visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Harvard University, Academia Sinica in Taiwan, Beijing and Fudan Universities in China, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She is the author of Gifts, Favors, & Banquets: the Art of Social Relationships in China, and editor of Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernities & State Formation, andPlaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China. Her forthcoming book: Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy & Religious Civil Society in Wenzhou, China (Duke University Press). She is also working on a second, more theoretical book on Wenzhou religiosity and politics.

Lecture Series: Is Policy Innovation possible under the Xi Jinping Regime?
2017-11-07 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Berlin) | Theologicum, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 2, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Is Policy Innovation possible under the Xi Jinping Regime?
Prof. Reza Hasmath (University of Alberta)
Tuesday, 07.11.2017, 18:00-19:30, T0.136

Abstract:
Despite playing a key contributory role in China’s recent economic reforms and the Party’s regime durability, there has been a noted reduction in central-level policy experimentation under Xi Jinping’s administration. Recent studies have further noted an empirical reduction in policy innovation at the subnational level, and question whether local officials will continue to experiment in the foreseeable future.
This talk suggests that although these changes at the central-level are filtering down to local officials, a great deal of variation in policy experimentation exists. Thus, the puzzle motivating this talk is how do local officials filter these institutional changes to the extent of observed variations in local policy innovation?
Using recent fieldwork evidence, this talk presents three potential explanations: (1) the ineffectiveness of the vertical reward and punishment systems operated by the Party-state; (2) differing base preferences of local officials; and, (3) the presence of a cohort effect, viz. a communities of practice. While some officials are still conducting policy experimentation, the overall reduction in innovation strongly suggests that potential solutions to governance problems remain trapped at the local level, and that the central government will lose this “adaptable” governance mechanism that has contributed to its past economic and political successes.

If you are interested in the paper “Beyond Special Privileges: The Discretionary Treatment of Ethnic Minorities in China’s Welfare System” written by Reza Hasmath and Andrew W. Macdonald, please write to us to request the paper.

Picture:Heather, blue building #2, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0,htps://ﬂic.kr/p/9hJVCA

Lecture Series: Social Policy in China: Retrospect and Prospect
2017-11-01 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Berlin) | Kulturwissenschaftliches Zentrum, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Social Policy in China: Retrospect and Prospect
Dr. Armin Müller (University of Göttingen)
Wednesday, 01.11.2017, 18:00-19:30, KWZ 0.609

Abstract
Since 1979, social protection in China has undergone fundamental institutional transformations. This presentation provides an overview of the state of the literature on social policy in the PRC, the institutional change which has characterized social protection in the reform period, and an outlook on future developments. Social protection under the planned economy was characterized by a division between urban and rural areas, decentralization, and companies functioning as enclosed mini-welfare states. In the course of economic reforms, urbanization, marketization and migration have generated substantial frictions with the institutional legacies of planned-economy social protection. The examples of health and pension insurance illustrate the pattern of institutional change that resulted from these frictions: a process of gradual functional integration. This process adapts social protection to marketization through the creation of insurance systems pooling risks between companies and households; it adapts previously separate urban and rural insurance systems to urbanization by integrating them; and it adapts insurance to migration by improving the portability of benefits from the decentralized and formally enclosed local insurance systems. Functional integration is also driving forward a dualization of social protection in China, with relatively generous benefits for people in regular, formal employment, and merely basic protection for the remainder of the population. While we enter the second term of the Xi administration, China’s social protection system keeps reproducing economic and political inequality rather than counter-balancing it. Current policy initiatives aim at attenuating inequalities related to employment status, locality, and the urban-rural divide. However, the potentially contentious nature of social redistribution raises questions regarding the degree to which these reforms can achieve their envisioned outcomes.

Picture: Pedro Szekely， Shanghai, China, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://flic.kr/p/YkeqME

Lecture: Global Elements in Traditional Chinese Historiography
2017-10-26 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Berlin) | Kulturwissenschaftliches Zentrum, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Lecture: Global Elements in Traditional Chinese Historiography
Prof. Ge Zhaoguang (Fudan University)
Thursday, October 26, 6pm- 8pm, KWZ 0.603

Conceptions of the World in 20th-Century Chinese Historiography
2017-10-26 - 2017-10-27 | Kulturwissenschaftliches Zentrum, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Conceptions of the World in 20th-Century Chinese Historiography
Time: 26-27 October 2017
Place: Göttingen, Germany
Organizer: Dr. Xin Fan, State University of New York at Fredonia

Over the course of the twentieth century, the constant writing and rewriting of history reflect aspects of the changing conceptions of the “world” in China. Through various lenses – including but not limited to nation-states, empires, races, civilizations, cultures, and classes – Chinese historians both creatively imagined global time and space and actively negotiated China’s position in it. This conference will posit new questions about the formation of Chinese worldviews by focusing on historiography as its primary field of inquiry. It will investigate a variety of ways in which Chinese historians constructed and deconstructed temporal and spatial concepts such as “Asian,” “Asiatic,” and “China.” In that manner, the workshop will also establish an exchange between the field of China studies and global and transregional studies. A cohort of leading scholars from China, North America, and Europe have already committed their participation in this event, and Professor Ge Zhaoguang from Fudan University will deliver a key speech during the event.
The conference is jointly hosted by the Göttingen Department of East Asian Studies, the Center for Modern East Asian Studies and the Academic Confucius Institute. Outside sponsors: Volkswagen Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Program:
26 October 2017
KWZ 0.603
18:00 – 20:00 Keynote Speech
Ge, Zhaoguang (Fudan University)
Global Elements in Traditional Chinese Historiography (in Chinese)

27 October 2017
Historische Sternwarte
Geismar Landstr. 11, 37083 Göttingen
9:00 – 9:15 Opening Remarks
Fan Xin & Dominic Sachsenmaier
9:15 – 11:15 Panel I
Making Sense of China and the World During the Early 20th Century
Chair: Sabine Dabringhaus (Freiburg)
Hon, Tze-ki (The City University of Hong Kong)
Locating China in the World: Newspapers and Textbooks in Late Qing Period
Schneider, Julia (Göttingen University)
Writing a General History of China (Zhongguo tongshi): Thinking about Ethnicity in Early Nationalist Historiography
Stapleton, Kristin (University at Buffalo)
Popular History from the Pope of Thick-Black Studies
11:15 – 11:45 Coffee Break
11:45 – 13:00 Panel 2
Problems of Regionalism, Universalism and Localism
Chair: Xin Fan (SUNY Fredonia; Global Fellow)
Han, Xiaorong (Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Southeast Asia in Twentieth Century Chinese Historiography
Schneider, Axel (Göttingen University)
Universal progress and particular history: Chinese engagement with concepts of universal history
13:00 – 14:15 Lunch Break
14:15 – 16:00 Panel 3
Chinese World Historical Outlooks and Marxism
Chair: TBA
Fan, Xin (SUNY Fredonia; Global Fellow)
The Forced Analogy: Marxism, Historiography, and the Chinese Worldview
Liu, Xiaoyuan (University of Virginia)
The Chinese Communist Understanding of the World through Tibet in the 1950s
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee Break
16:30 – 18:30 Panel 4
Challenges and Opportunities of Global Historical Scholarship
Chair: Dominic Sachsenmaier (Göttingen)
Chen, Huaiyu (Arizona State University)
The Rise of the “Asian History” in Mainland China in the 1950s: A Global Perspective
Wang, Q. Edward (Rowan University)
World History on A Par with Chinese History? — China’s Search for World Power
De Baets, Antoon (University of Groningen)
The Subversive Power of Historical Analogies: A Global Approach
18:30 – 18:45 Closing Remarks
19:00 Conference Dinner

The conference keynote speech (“Global Elements in Traditional Chinese Historiography”) will be open to the public, and no prior registration is necessary.
The main conference will take place on Friday, October 27 (9am – 6pm) at the Historische Sternwarte at Geismarer Landstrasse 11. Also this event is free and open to the public but pre-registration is required. If you wish to attend the conference, please send an email to the following address: andreas.weis@stud.uni-goettingen.de

Please make sure to register by Monday, October 23rd.

Manchu in Global History: A Research Language for Qing Historians
2017-09-19 08:00 - 2017-09-22 17:00 (Europe/Paris)
International Symposium:
Manchu in Global History:
A Research Language for Qing Historians
Keynote Lecture:
Manchu Sources and the Problem of Translation
Manchu in Global History:
A Research Language for Qing Historians
Time: September 19-22, 2017
Place: KWZ 1.601, University of Göttingen

Organisers:
Julia C. Schneider (Department for East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen)
Katja Pessl (Centre for Modern East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen)

Manchu Sources and the Problem of Translation
Prof. Dr. Mark Elliott (Harvard University)
September 20, 2017, 4-6 pm (c.t.)
KWZ, Room 1.601/ 0.602
As an ‘ethnic minority’ with origins in the semi-nomadic civilisations of northeast Asia(Manchuria), the Manchus successfully ruled Han-dominated China and extended the territory of the “Great Qing” (1636/1644-1912) far into Inner Asia, including Mongolia, Tibet, and East Turkestan (Xinjiang). Thereby, they created a wide corridor, connecting many different peoples and cultures under their rule and beyond.
The University of Göttingen (Department of East Asian Studies & Centre for Modern East Asian Studies) will be hosting the workshop Manchu in Global History: A Research Language for Qing Historians. We invite paper proposals from prospective speakers who offer specific case studies as well as broader studies on Qing and Manchu history.
Prof. Dr. Mark Elliott is Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History at Harvard University. He is one of the most well-known historians of (New) Qing history and has published influential works such as Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World (2009), also available in Korean (2012) and Chinese (2014), The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (2001), etc..
Click here for more details about the manchu workshop
Image: David Baron Folgen,Sign above gate, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://flic.kr/p/33JdAz

Podium: What is the Future of Made in China?
2017-07-17 14:00 - 18:00 (Europe/Paris) | ZHG 002
CeMEAS Podium:
What is the Future of Made in China?
Opportunities and Challenges for Europe
Monday, July 17, 2017 • 14:00 – 18:00
Emmy-Noether-Saal Tagungs- und Veranstaltungshaus Alte Mensa
Wilhelmsplatz 3, 37073 Göttingen

Introduction:
This half-day event will explore these issues in discussion with leading international scholars and government experts. A first roundtable will analyze the economic challenges and policy aims behind “Made in China 2025” and evaluate the prospects of this state-led approach to industrial upgrading. A second roundtable will focus on the opportunities and challenges for European economies by analyzing both the drivers and impact of outward Chinese investment in Europe as well as the new terrain of global competition in key sectors, including clean tech.
Program

2:00 pm Welcome
Hiltraud Casper-Hehne, Vice-President, University of Göttingen
Sarah Eaton, Centre for Modern East Asian Studies, Director
2:10 – 3:40 pm Made in China 2025: Context, Goals and Prospects
Sebastian Heilmann: Made in China 2025: What? Why? Will it Work?
Barry Naughton: China in Search of a New Growth Model
Victor Shih: Financing Mercantilism: China’s Quest to Dominate Global Trade
3:40-4:00 pm Coffee Break
4:00-5:30 pm Made in China 2025: Opportunities and Challenges for Europe
Doris Fischer: Fighting for the Lead: The Case of Green Tech
Thilo Hanemann: The Implications of Made in China 2025 for Europe: Investment Flows and M&A
Eric Thun: The Challenge of Upgrading and Innovation in Global Markets: A View from the Firm Level
5:30 pm Wrap-Up

Contact: cemeas@uni-goettingen.de
Click here for more details

Made in China_Flyer_17.7.2017

The Beginning of the Century: A Reconsideration on the 20th Century in Chinese/Global History
2017-07-12 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris)
Lecture

The Beginning of the Century: A Reconsideration on the 20th Century in Chinese/Global History
Prof. WANG Hui (Tsinghua University)

Ort: Adam-von-Trott-Saal, Alte Mensa am Wilhelmsplatz
Datum: 12.07.2017, 18.00 – 20.00 Uhr
Organizers:
Akademisches Konfuzius-Institut Göttingen &
Department of East Asian Studies &
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

Abstract:
At the beginning of the 20th century, the alien idea of century began to replace other traditional concepts of chronology in China and reshaped Chinese idea of time. Following the application of 20th century in Chinese context, other related concepts such as 19th century, 18th century and their sequence emerged as derivatives of 20th century. Before 1900, the concept of century had almost not been discussed in this sense in China and never used as the self-consciousness of our era. The notion of century is closely connected with the 20th century, its distinction from past eras being not just a simple temporal demarcation but an understanding of singular propensity of the time, which render the history of the
others into a history of one’s own, while situating it within history in toto for explanation and identification. This is the birth of global synchronicity in the history of China. How did intellectuals theorized the idea of 20th century? This talk will examine the birth of the notion of the 20th century in China from an intellectual history perspective and analyze its particular position in the history of China from the perspectives of time (history), space, self-identification, social ideals and etc.

Presenter:
Wang Hui is a Changjiang Scholar Professor in the Department of Chinese Literature and the Department of History, Tsinghua University, and is Director of the Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences. His recent publications include China’s Twentieth Century (London/New York, Verso, 2016), and China from Empire to Nation-State (two volumes) (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2014).

Lecture: Liberating the "oppressed nations": Chinese communist networks and the Comintern in Southeast Asia, the Americas, and Europe, c. 1920s-1930s
2017-07-11 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Paris)
CeMEAS Lecture:
Liberating the “oppressed nations”: Chinese communist networks and the Comintern in Southeast Asia, the Americas, and Europe, c. 1920s-1930s
Anna Belogurova, CeMIS, Universität Göttingen
Tuesday, 11.07.2017, 18:00 – 19:30, VG 1.105

Abstract:
In the context of unprecedented circulation of people and ideas in the interwar global moment, Chinese communists built their overseas networks in the old empires and invented new nations. As they were making revolution both in and outside China, they aspired to liberate the world from imperialism and to save China. Their rationale was rooted both in long held ideas about China’s place in the world, as well as in new theories of political revolution which had originated outside China.
Different local contexts and transnational actors such as the Comintern, shaped the interaction of the Chinese networks with local nationalism and local anti-colonial movements. As the result, the historical roles of the Chinese networks in Americas, Europe, and the Southeast Asia were different.

Image: tiegeltuf, Netzwerk, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0), https://flic.kr/p/pN652C

CeMEAS Lecture Series: Air Pollution and the Public in China: Perspectives from Urban and Rural Areas
2017-07-04 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Paris)
CeMEAS Lecture Series:
Air Pollution and the Public in China: Perspectives from Urban and Rural Areas
Bryan Tilt, Oregon State University
Tuesday, 04.07.2017, 18:00 – 19:30, VG 2.104

Abstract:
China’s air pollution crisis has recently attracted a great deal of scientific and media attention both domestically and internationally. While official statistics and government pronouncements have been widely circulated and discussed via social media, the perceptions and reactions of people who deal with smog on a daily basis remain poorly understood. How do people in urban and rural China perceive the environmental crisis they face? How do they understand and cope with air pollution in the context of their daily lives? How do they balance the relationship between environmental quality and overall quality of life? In this presentation, I draw upon recent research in one urban area (Tangshan, Hebei Province) and one rural area (Panzhihua, Sichuan Province) to address these questions. I discuss the research findings in the context of emerging literature on the rise of environmental consciousness in China, and consider the implications for the control of air pollution in China today.

Picture: Steve Slep,DSC01109, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://flic.kr/p/2s1DTy

Lecture: The Powers of Xi Jinping
2017-06-28 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris)
Lecture:
The Powers of Xi Jinping
Prof. Kerry Brown (King’s College London)
Venue: VG 0.606
Date: Wednesday, 28.06.2017, 18.00 – 20.00 Uhr
Organizers: Centre for Modern East Asian Studies & Department for Political Science
Abstract:
This year will see the 19th Party Congress, marking a moment of re-evaluation for the Communist Party policy and elite leadership. Under Xi since 2012 there has been what is claimed to have been a concentration of power within his hands. But how can we best understand this power, and what sense does it make to say that Xi is the new Mao of China? What is his political programme, and how does it relate to the organisation he is meant to be serving and leading to a sustainable future – the Communist Party of China.’
Presenter:
Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London. His main interests are in the politics and society of modern China, in its international relations and its political economy. His monographs include `Struggling Giant: China in the 21st Century’ (London, June 2007 )and `Friends and Enemies: The Past, Present and Future of the Communist Party of China’ (London, 2009).

Image: APEC 2013,neiljs,Presiden China Hadiri APEC 2013, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0), https://flic.kr/p/goJ66F

CeMEAS Lecture Series: Paper Tigers, Hidden Dragons: Firms and the Political Economy of China’s Technological Development
2017-06-27 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Paris)
CeMEAS Lecture Series:
Paper Tigers, Hidden Dragons: Firms and the Political Economy of China’s Technological Development
Douglas B. Fuller, Zhejiang University
Tuesday, 27.06.2017, 18:00 – 19:30, VG 3.103

China presents us with a conundrum. How has a developing country with a spectacularly inefficient financial system, coupled with asset-destroying state-owned firms, managed to create a number of vibrant high-tech firms?
China’s domestic financial system fails most private firms by neglecting to give them sufficient support to pursue technological upgrading, even while smothering state-favored firms by providing them with too much support. Due to their foreign financing, multinational corporations suffer from neither insufficient funds nor soft budget constraints, but they are insufficiently committed to China’s development. Hybrid firms that combine ethnic Chinese management and foreign financing are the hidden dragons driving China’s technological development. They avoid the maladies of China’s domestic financial system while remaining committed to enhancing China’s domestic technological capabilities.
In sad contrast, China’s domestic firms are technological paper tigers. State efforts to build local innovation clusters and create national champions have not managed to transform these firms into drivers of technological development.
These findings upend fundamental debates about China’s political economy. Rather than a choice between state capitalism and building domestic market institutions, China has fostered state capitalism even while tolerating the importing of foreign market institutions. While the book’s findings suggest that China’s state and domestic market institutions are ineffective, the hybrids promise an alternative way to avoid the middle-income trap. By documenting how variation in China’s institutional terrain impacts technological development, the book also provides much needed nuance to widespread yet mutually irreconcilable claims that China is either an emerging innovation power or a technological backwater.
Looking beyond China, hybrid-led development has implications for new alternative economic development models and new ways to conceptualize contemporary capitalism that go beyond current domestic institution-centric approaches.

Picture: Matt, Garment factory jiaxing, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://flic.kr/p/593ruE

CeMEAS Lecture Series: Behind the headlines: reforming governance from rebuilding China’s fiscal foundations
2017-06-19 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Paris)
CeMEAS Lecture Series:
Behind the headlines: reforming governance from rebuilding China’s fiscal foundations
Christine Wong, University of Melbourne
Monday, 19.06.2017, 18:00 – 19:30, KWZ 0.602

In the lead up to the 19th Party Congress in November 2017, the dominant narrative on Xi Jinping’s first term is that his ambitious reform program has stalled, and that the anti-corruption campaign is just a ruse for power-grab and repression. This lecture argues instead that behind the headlines, significant progress has been made towards building the foundations for a rule-based system of governance.
The analysis starts from reviewing the progress in fiscal reform, a sector seen as the lynchpin of the ambitious, comprehensive program announced at the Third Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th Party Congress in November 2013. From the outside, it looks like the early passage of the Budget Law and other legislative changes have brought few concrete results, and progress is far behind schedule. In fact, the Budget Law and associated documents have set in motion some fundamental changes that will redraw the boundary between the state and market, as well as the state and society. These changes are just starting to be implemented, though, and progress will unlikely be linear.
Profile
Christine Wong is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne. Prior to joining Melbourne, she was Professor and Director of Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford, where she was a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. She has also held the Henry M. Jackson Professorship in International Studies at the University of Washington, and taught economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz; University of California, Berkeley; and Mount Holyoke College.
Professor Wong has also held senior staff positions in the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and worked extensively with other international agencies including the IMF, OECD, UNDP, UNICEF, and the UK Department for International Development. She is a member of the OECD Advisory Panel on Budgeting and Public Expenditures.
Professor Wong is a leading authority on China’s public finance. She has published widely on China’s public finance, intergovernmental fiscal relations and their implications for governance, economic development and welfare. Her recent research is focused on economic reform under Xi Jinping and the institutional constraints to modernising governance in China.

Picture: Lyn Gateley, DSC01599, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://flic.kr/p/8iF7Ey

CeMEAS Lecture: The 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party
2017-06-06 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Paris)
CeMEAS Lecture:
The 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party: a Quantitative Assessment
Victor Shih, University of California San Diego
Tuesday, 06.06.2017, 18:00 – 19:30, VG 2.104

Co-organizer: Department for Political Science

Abstract:
Two important questions that can be asked about the 19th Party Congress, scheduled to take place in the fall of 2017, include who will take over key positions at the top of the party hierarchy and whether Party Secretary General Xi Jinping can dominate the upper echelons of the Communist Party. Drawing from a quantitative biographical database of over 4000 Chinese political elite, I first attempt to present some theoretical and machine learning predictions about who will enter the Politburo in the fall of 2017. Then, using the same data, I assess whether Xi Jinping already dominates the Chinese Communist Party, or whether that is still a goal he needs to achieve in the fall congress.

About the lecturer:
Victor Shih is an associate professor of political economy and has published widely on the politics of Chinese banking policies, fiscal policies and exchange rates. He was the first analyst to identify the risk of massive local government debt, and is the author of “Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation.”
Prior to joining UC San Diego, Shih was a professor of political science at Northwestern University and former principal for The Carlyle Group.
Shih is currently engaged in a study of how the coalition-formation strategies of founding leaders had a profound impact on the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party. He is also constructing a large database on biographical information of elites in China.

Image: neiljs, Tiananmen Square Beijing, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0), https://flic.kr/p/5TfkQz
