China Colloquia

JUNE 16, 2008

Understanding China Demographic and Business Census Data with GIS

The Census data of China provides comprehensive demographic and business information for the research and education on China. This presentation will give an introduction to some China data projects at the China Data Center of the University of Michigan. Some background information about China Census data, including methodologies, definitions, and data coverage will be introduced. The presentation will demonstrate how the demographic and business data can be integrated with the GIS maps of China at province, prefecture, county, and township levels, Some innovative toolkits will be introduced for advanced spatial data analysis and mapping of China. This presentation will also discuss some applications on spatial studies on China.
 

Co-sponsored by the China Studies Program and Department of Geography.

Enduring Rural Inequality in
Northeast China, 1749-1999

James Z. Lee is Frederick Huetwell Professor of Chinese History, research professor at the Population Studies Center, Faculty Associate at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, and Director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan, and Changjiang Scholar at Peking University. Professor Lee has authored or co-authored six books and co-edited five books focused largely on the demography, ethnicity, fiscal and frontier history of late imperial China, as well as on the social organization, and social mobility of late imperial and contemporary China.  In these publications he and his long-time collaborator, Cameron Campbell, link historical and contemporary archival sources, social surveys, genealogies, inscriptions, and oral histories to create large, individual level panel data sets extending from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century.

His presentation summarizes their recent analyses of these populations and shows how despite recent profound political, social, and economic change, many distinctive institutions and patterns of demographic behavior, stratification, and social mobility persist from China’s imperial past to today.

Moderator: Madeleine Dong, Professor of History and Chair, China Studies Program, Jackson School of International Studies

Beijing Olympics 2008: Politics and Culture of Sports

Dan Abramson is Associate Professor of Urban Design and Planning and is also a member of the China Studies Faculty of the University of Washington. He received a doctorate in urban planning from Tsinghua University, Beijing, while participating in numerous urban redevelopment and preservation plans in the 1990s. He is the first American to earn a degree in urban planning from a Chinese university. At the UW, he continues to consult and pursue research on urban planning and development in China.

David Bachman is a professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, where he teaches on Chinese domestic politics and foreign policy.  He also serves as the associate director of the School, and is an adjunct professor of Political Science.  Prior to coming to the University of Washington in 1991, he taught at Stanford and Princeton.  He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.  He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University.  He has written Chen Yun and the Chinese Political System; Bureaucracy, Economy, and Leadership in China; and co-edited Yan Jiaqi and China’s Struggle for Democracy, as well as numerous articles appearing in China Quarterly, The China Journal, The Journal of Contemporary China, Asian Survey, Issues and Studies, and in edited collections and other journals. He is currently working on a book on the history of China’s defense industries from 1949-1985, and their role in the Chinese political economy.

Kristi Heim writes about technology, business and philanthropy, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Before joining The Seattle Times in 2004, she worked for the San Jose Mercury News, covering technology, Microsoft and news from the Pacific Northwest. Before that she worked at the Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's degree in international studies with a focus on China from the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington.

After majoring in history at the University of Delaware, Steve Kelley began his professional career as a repairman for Sears in Wilmington Delaware.  Finally, after knocking on enough doors, he landed a reporting job with the Centralia Daily Chronicle, moved to the Daily Olympian in Olympia, the Oregonian in Portland and, finally, the Seattle Times.  He has been writing columns at the Times for the past 25 years and celebrated his 25^th anniversary with the Times last week. Belated anniversary cards will be appreciated.  Beijing will be the eighth Olympic Games Steve has covered. Winter: Sarajevo 1984, Calgary 1988, Lillehammer 1994 and Salt Lake City 2002.  Summer: Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000.

This program is free and open to the public.  Registration is not required.

Map link:

http://www.washington.edu/home/maps/northcentral.html?80,83,616,391

Parking is available in the Central Plaza Parking Garage off of 15^th Avenue.

Co-sponsored by the UW East Asia Center, the China Studies Program, the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle, and the Washington State China Relations Council.

Access, Quality and Equity:
Compulsory Education Development in China

Yan WANG is a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow of Fulbright Program sponsored by the State Department of the USA from 2007 to 2008.  She was Executive Director, Department for International Cooperation, Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences from 2002 to 2007, engaged in educational research and policy consultancy extensively in the areas of basic education, vocational and technical education and training, and higher education. She holds a Master of Educational Economics and Administration and a first degree in English Literature. She is now pursuing PhD study at the University of Hong Kong.

China has made nine-year basic education accessible in 99% of populated areas in 2007, 20 years after promulgation of the Law for Compulsory Education. It is recognized as a spectacular achievement for a developing country with the largest education population in the world. The progress was, however, accompanied by ongoing challenges to access, quality and equity. The issues such as financing of rural provisions, inadequate teacher resources, and provision of the education for migrant children, sponsorship of private institutions have emerged, some even sustained after the substantial revision of the Law for Compulsory Education in 2006. The proposed seminar attempts to review the compulsory education development in China and address the major milestones and challenges in relation to access, quality and equity.

China and the Global Economy: The New Reality

Starting a business from scratch in any industry in any country is difficult. Starting a business in which you have had no prior experience, in a country where you have never worked and whose language you cannot understand is almost impossible. Jack Perkowski, pioneer in the Chinese private equity market and author of "Managing the Dragon", did exactly that in China in 1994 when he founded ASIMCO Technologies and built it into a $500 million components company with 17 plants in China and offices in the US, UK and Japan. Jack will provide his unique insights into the ways in which China's fundamentally different, cost perspective is affecting its cost structure, the development of its markets and technological innovation, and how these factors will have a profound impact on the way all industries operate around the globe. Jack's book will be available for purchase and to be signed after the event.

Co-sponsored by the UW Global Business Center, China Studies Program, and East Asia Center.

Stevan Harrell, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington

John Vidale, Professor, Earth and Spaces Sciences, and Director, The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, University of Washington

Susan Whiting, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Washington

Li Yongxian, Professor, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

Zeng Zongyong, Professor, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

China Earthquake Forum

a. Introduction to the affected regions

b. The geology and physics of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake 

c. Politics of local media coverage and political legitimacy

d. Reports by two Sichuan University Professors who were in Sichuan during the earthquake

e. Overview of relief efforts and what people can do to help

Co-sponsored by the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, the China Studies Program, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, and the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.

For more information, please visit

http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=41780 and

 http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=41878

Cookies and coffee/tea/water will be served.

The Give and Take of Qing Rule:  Local Tribute and Imperial Gifts on Kangxi's Southern Tours

Michael G. Chang received his A.B. in sociology from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in East Asian history from the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of A Court on Horseback:  Imperial Touring and the Construction of Qing Rule, 1680-1785 (Harvard, 2007).

This presentation is part of a more broadly conceived exploration of the political and material cultures in and through which High Qing rule (1680s-1790s) was constructed.  It examines issues of local tribute and imperial gift-giving as windows into the material practices and ideological constructs through which Qing authority was both constituted and legitimized.

Environment and Sustainable Development:
A Comparison of Taiwan with Hong Kong and China

East Asia is a paradigm in many ways of the costs of development sweeping the world, resulting in rapid urbanization and industrialization, followed by severe environmental degradation and pollution. Taiwan, following in Japan’s footsteps, has had some of the world’s worst environmental problems, with the PRC and Hong Kong following suit. The three states have widely different geographies, political and economic systems, and environmental programs. All three began to really address the environment only in the 1980s. Taiwan has come the furthest, China the least. All three states aspire to sustainable development, but none are close to reaching that goal. China faces the most daunting challenges.

Co-Sponsored by the UW China Studies Program and Department of Geography.

Brown Bag Lunch Talk:
Commercial Law, Technological Innovation, and the Management of Supply Chains in China

A graduate of Harvard Law (1987), Professor Winn teaches commercial and technology law courses and is the Co-Director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce & Technology. She is also a Visiting Fellow of the University of Melbourne School of Law, teaching in the e-Law program there. Professor Winn is a member of the American Law Institute and a board member of CALI - Computer Assisted Legal Instruction. From 1987 to 1989 she practiced law at the New York office of Shearman & Sterling. She is co-author of the treatise Law of Electronic Commerce (4th ed. 2001) and the casebook Electronic Commerce (2002). Her current research interests include electronic commerce law developments in the U.S., EU and greater China.

In the face of rising costs and increasing global competition, many Chinese enterprises will have to overcome new challenges to survive.  One challenge is improving the management of manufacturing and distribution systems known as production networks or supply chains.  Recent commercial law reforms intended to remove legal obstacles to the use of information technology to improve business processes seem to be having little effect on the management of Chinese enterprises.  Recent problems with lead paint on toys and blood thinner heparin have highlighted the significance of the failure of many Chinese enterprises to focus on supply chain management.  Professor Winn will identify some factors inhibiting adoption of new supply chain management technologies and processes, and consider what, if any, policies the PRC might use to promote their adoption more effectively.

The Three Faces of Chinese Power:
Might, Money and Minds

Professor David M. Lampton is Dean of Faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), George and Sadie Hyman Professor of China Studies and Director of China Studies.  He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and was former President of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.  In addition, he consults with government, foundations, and businesses, including the law firm of Akin Gump where he is senior international advisor on China.  Professor Lampton has written and edited many books and articles, including: Same Bed, Different Drams: Managing U.S.-China Relations, 1989-2000, and The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Age of Reform (editor).  Lampton will talk about his just-published book entitled: The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money and Minds (University of California Press, 2008).  The paperback edition will be available for purchase for those interested.

This book addresses the following issues, among which are: How have Chinese viewed national power throughout their history?  What is the dominant conception of comprehensive national power and national strategy today in China?  How is China’s power along different dimensions changing?  And, what may all this mean for the world and America as we look ahead?

Co-sponsored by the UW China Studies Program and Global Business Center.

Naturalness in Xie Lingyun's Poetic Works

Wendy Swartz is Assistant Professor of Pre-Modern Chinese Literature at Columbia University. Her research is primarily on medieval Chinese poetry and poetics. She has published articles on Tao Yuanming and Xie Lingyun and is the author of Reading Tao Yuanming: Shifting Paradigms of Historical Reception (427-1900) (forthcoming July 2008, Harvard University Press).

Professor Swartz’s paper grows out of her current book project on quotation and allusion in Six Dynasties poetry, more specifically, poetic citations of the Three Abstruse texts (san xuan): the Yijing, Laozi and Zhuangzi. She is interested in the ways in which philosophical trends impacted and became integrated into the development of poetic practices during early medieval China (both its specific instances and larger ramifications). Her presentation will center on a couple of Xie Lingyun’s representative landscape poetic works, including the "Fu on Dwelling in the Mountains," and will outline the role of the Yijing in his poetics. Scholarship on Xie Lingyun up to now has rarely shown exclusive attention to Xie’s use of the Yijing, which in fact reveals much about the conceptual and structural framework of his mode of representation and about how he orders the world he sees. I will argue that Xie Lingyun's poetry exemplifies a literary naturalness that is informed by his reading of the Yijing, an important aspect largely ignored by scholars today.

Urbanization and Urban Planning in China:
A Journalist's Perspective

WANG Jun graduated in 1991 from the Chinese People's University journalism department, and has since worked in the Beijing Branch of the Xinhua News Agency reporting on economic affairs. In 1993, he began researching the work of the architect and planner LIANG Sicheng, and the planning and preservation of the old city of Beijing.  He published a series of papers on this subject, and one book that is currently being translated into English, "Cheng Ji [City Record]" (2003).  More recently, WANG Jun has become a widely published and consulted observer of urban affairs in China, and a leading critic of urban development.

His latest book project, "Cai Fang Ben Shang de Cheng Shi [Cities in a Journalist's Notebook]", to be published later this year, discusses urban development throughout China, and reflects on issues of urban form, property, taxation, etc.  He maintains a blog at http://blog.sina.com.cn/wangjun 

WANG Jun's current visit to the United States is sponsored by the American Planning Association, and his visit to UW is sponsored by the UW China Studies Program and the College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

The Tomb of the Sogdian Wirkak: Secular and Religious Insights into the Life of a Sabao

Professor Dien was born in St. Louis, attended Washington University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley, and his degrees are all from the latter.  He has taught at the University of Hawaii, Columbia University and Stanford University, from which he retired fourteen years ago. His area of specialization is the history, culture and archaeology of early China, the history and culture of the nomads of Central Asia, and the Silk Road.

This illustrated presentation looks at the tomb of the Sogdian Wirkak (d. 579) at Xi’an, China, which, with its bilingual inscription and unique décor, has provided much new information concerning the Sogdian emigrèes who settled in China in the 4th to 6th centuries AD.  We are able to follow the career of this community leader (sabao), and to observe the Zoroastrian based scenes of his spirit’s journey after death, combined with Buddhist and Manichaean elements. The size of the tomb also raises questions about the place of the Sogdians in the Chinese society of that time.

Disentangling Two Canonical Views of History: Mencius and the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals

Mark Csikszentmihalyi was educated at Harvard and Stanford Universities. He has written, “Readings in Han Chinese Thought” (2006) and “Material Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early China” (2004). He has been on the editorial board of Early China (2000-2005), is Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (since 2004) and is Editor of the Journal of Chinese Religions.

Excavated texts point to an alternative understanding of the Mengzi’s theory of the periodic appearance of sages every 500 years. They also allow us to better appreciate the way that assumptions about the internal coherence of canons caused readings of the Mengzi to be influenced by the Gongyang School’s theory of the “Three Ages.” Professor Csikszentmihalyi’s presentation will focus on how this speaks to an important use of excavated texts that goes beyond providing new titles: shedding light on the factors that influenced traditional readings of transmitted titles.

Chinese Consumerism in the Twentieth Century

Karl Gerth’s research interests concern how China has related to the rest of the world since the nineteenth century. He is currently researching two book projects: one conceptualizing consumerism in twentieth-century China and a second focusing on the impact of the Chinese Communist Party’s radical social policies on everyday life in the nation’s urban centers in the 1950s. He received his PHD in history from Harvard in 2000 and taught at the University of South Carolina before moving to Oxford in 2007.

Karl Gerth will provide an overview of the history of consumerism in China since 1949 and suggest how studying the history of consumerism helps us understand three critical issues in modern Chinese history in new ways: the development of nationalism, the origins of the Communist Revolution of 1949, and impact of China on the contemporary world.

A Tale of Two Women: Primitivity, Cosmopolitanism & Sexual Autonomy

Eileen Rose Walsh, cultural anthropologist, researches tourism as consumption and development, and the transformations which Chinese tourism has brought to a matrilineal ethnic minority group, the Mosuo, and the area in which they live.  Walsh is moving to a new position at University of Oxford, and is completing her manuscript entitled Living the Myth of Matriarchy: Gender, Tourism and the Mosuo. 

The Mosuo of southwest China are now celebrated as matriarchal with free love, and provide to Chinese travellers not just minority difference, but the idea of a radical sexual escape from “civilized” Confucian standards.  Within this paper, I discuss the dynamics of tourism at Lugu Lake, and then turn to two celebrity cases, one of a Mosuo singer become international personality and the other of a Chinese businesswoman famed for loving a Mosuo man and moving to Mosuo  territory.  These cases illustrate ways in which Mosuo identity has come to represent for Han consumers not just the primitivity of the Other, but also hyper-modernity and sexual freedom.

Democratic Consolidation or Democratic Reversal? –Taiwan’s 2008 Presidential Election

Chen-shen J. Yen is a Research Fellow and Chair of the First Divison at the Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University (Taipei). He earned MAs in History and Political Science from the University of Texas and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Purdue University.  His current research interests include Taiwan’s foreign relations, democratization and ethnic conflicts in Africa, and cross-strait relations.  In 2005, he assumed the editorship of the reputed journal Issues & Studies.

Taiwan held its fourth direct presidential election since 1996 on March 22, 2008.  Opposition candidate Ma Ying-jeou of the Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT) won a convincing victory over ruling party candidate Frank Hsieh of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) by garnering over 58% of the popular support and beating the latter by nearly 17% or over 2.2 million votes in the final ballot counts.  This is the second alternation of party in power since 2000.  From the studies of democratization and democratic theories, it can be considered a condition where democratic consolidation has been met.

However, as the Nationalist Party already won a landslide victory in the parliamentary poll two months earlier taking 81 of the 113 total seats, these two electoral results raise concern about whether Taiwan might go back to the authoritarian days of one-dominant party system and led to a democratic reversal in the process.  In this sense, democratic consolidation seems to have been achieved while possibility for democratic reversal remains to be seen.  The political development that will draw considerable attention in the near future is whether the wounded and somewhat discredited DPP can mount a comeback and serve as a viable opposition just like it did before coming to power in 2000.

Beijing and the 'Green Olympics'

What does “environmental protection” really mean in China? And what does the Chinese government’s pledge to hold a “Green Olympics” in Beijing this coming August indicate for China’s growing environmental movement? Dr. Bao Maohong, professor of environmental history at Peking University, will address these questions.

Dr. Bao’s lecture is entitled “Beijing and the ‘Green Olympics’” and will showcase his expertise as a top analyst of Chinese environmental policy. In addition to many presentations and interviews at U.S. institutions such as American University and the University of Southern California, he worked for two years as a visiting professor at Bayreuth University in Germany. Dr. Bao is currently a guest professor at Obirin University in Japan, and arrives directly in Washington state from Tokyo. His essays have been published in many Chinese and Japanese journals, and a recent article “The Evolution of Environmental Policy and its impact in People’s Republic of China,” appeared in Conservation and Society (March 2006).

Bao Maohong not only brings great insight into Chinese environmental issues but also brings to bear his personal interest developing transnational linkages between the non-governmental organizations that he believes are vital to slowing global warming. Dr. Bao will be in residence at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma from March 7-12.

"The 'Discovery' of Malnutrition in China:

A Window onto the Comparative and Transnational History of Medicine, Hunger, and the Body"

Mark Swislocki is Assistant Professor of History at Brown University, where he has taught since 2003.  He earned his Ph.D. in History from Stanford University in 2002.  His research focuses on the social and cultural history of China, and his interests include the history of food and cuisine, medicine and the history of the body, and human-animal relations.  His first book, Culinary Nostalgia: Regional Food Culture in Shanghai, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press.

Malnutrition was “discovered” in China during the Republican period (1912-1949).  This was a genuine medical discovery that surprised and concerned many observers of China’s relatively new and growing industrial workforce, among whom malnutrition had become widespread by the 1930s.  It was also, however, a “discovery,” made possible by new ideas about the body and nutrition that provided Chinese with a new framework for conceptualizing the relationship between eating and health.  These ideas, which originated in Europe and the United States, matured internationally during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century and spread quickly not only to China, but to many other parts of the world, including Japan, Eastern Africa, and India, where malnutrition was also “discovered” during these same years.  Situating the Chinese “discovery” in this global context provides a valuable comparative framework of identifying the shared and divergent patterns in the global history of malnutrition and the processes leading to its discovery and redefinition.  Chinese observers of malnutrition located the Chinese case in a distinctive national history of food, medicine, and social change.  However, as in numerous other parts of the world, malnutrition in China was eventually defined largely as a personal medical problem, rather than a social problem, and as one that could be solved by changing worker’s eating habits, social customs, and spending patterns.  Placing this moment of Chinese history in a global comparative context helps us think through the benefits and limitations of studying the comparative history of China from the China-Japan or “colonial modernity” models that have heretofore informed and inhibited understanding of China’s historical relationship to global currents.

Eurasian Crossroads: History and the Present in Xinjiang

James A. Millward is Associate Professor of History in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  His teaching and research has focused on the relations and linkages between China and Inner Asia, particularly the Xinjiang region (his recent book, Eurasian Crossroads, is a history of Chinese Central Asia).   Currently he is at work on a world history of stringed instruments, from earliest origins to the globalization of the guitar.

In this talk, Millward provides a broad perspective on the history and current affairs of the region known as Xinjiang or Chinese Central Asia, touching on three themes:  the role of geography and the environment; the region's broader linkages to Eurasian centers; and the changing modes of political and social identity embraced by the region's inhabitants.  While Xinjiang is often considered a remote, peripheral place, Millward shows how its history has in fact been defined by its connectedness and communications between the Mediterranean basin, India, China and the world.

Interaction Between Government and Society in the Development of Public Interest Law in China

Mina Titi Liu is currently the Garvey Schubert Barer visiting professor in Asian Law at the University of Washington School of Law. Her research and teaching focuses on Chinese law and society, comparative criminal procedure and public interest law. She was the Law and Rights program officer in China for the Ford Foundation from July 2000 to March 2007. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

The presentation will discuss how international legal cooperation on legal reform in China becomes a site of contestation between governmental and non-governmental actors, using the development of public interest law in China as a case study.

A Talk with Shi Lei
A Chinese Jewish Descendant from Kaifeng

Shi Lei represents the younger generation of Jewish descendants in Kaifeng, China, a community whose history dates back over a thousand years to the Tang Dynasty. With only a few hundred Jewish descendants still living in China (out of a population of 1.3 billion ethnic Chinese), the Jewish descendants are heirs to a unique and little known place in the annals of both Chinese and Jewish history. Shi Lei will discuss the Kaifeng Jewish community and his own experiences as a Jewish descendant in both China and Israel.

The event is sponsored by the UW Jewish Studies Program and UW China Studies Program. The American Jewish Committee, Greater Seattle Chapter and the Sino-Judaic Institute are co-sponsoring his visit to Seattle.

Jerome Silbergeld, P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Chinese Art History and Director of the Tang Center for East Asian Art, Princeton University and Yangming Chu, Chief Curator, Seattle Chinese Garden Society

From Suzhou to Sichuan to Seattle: The Chinese Garden, Regional Variation, and International Transmission

Jerome Silbergeld is the P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Chinese Art History and Director of the Tang Center for East Asian Art at Princeton University. He was previously the chair of Art History and director of the School of Art at the University of Washington, where he taught for twenty-five years. He teaches and publishes in the areas of Chinese painting history, both traditional and contemporary, Chinese cinema and photography, and Chinese architecture and gardens. He is the author of more than forty articles and book chapters, as well as seven books and three edited volumes, including Chinese Painting Style (1982), Contradictions: Artistic Life, the Socialist State, and the Chinese Painter Li Huasheng (1993), China Into Film (1999), Hitchcock With a Chinese Face (2004), and a forthcoming book on the films of director Jiang Wen. He is currently organizing two exhibitions, on contemporary Chinese/American art for the Princeton University Art Museum and on Chinese documentary photography for the China Institute in New York.

Yangming Chu recently joined the Seattle Chinese Garden Society as chief curator. A Chinese art historian, Chu most recently was deputy director and curator of the Beijing World Art Museum. Prior positions included research associate at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and curator of the New York Chinese Scholar’s Garden at the Staten Island Botanical Garden, where he supervised the garden’s construction and operations. From 1995-97 while at the MMA, he coordinated the renovation of the Astor Court, a re-creation of a Ming Dynasty garden courtyard, the installation of Chinese architectural components for the new Chinese Galleries, and worked on the preparations and installation of "The Splendors of Imperial China." A native of Yangzhou, China, Chu earned his BA at the Sichuan International Studies University in Chongqing, and an MA and MPhil in art history at Columbia University, where he is completing his doctorate.

Our present-day knowledge of Chinese gardens is mostly based on examples from China's eastern cities, from Yangzhou and Suzhou through Hangzhou in the south, and from Beijing in the north. Western and Chinese literature on the subject suggests a species of garden so singular, so self-contained, so coherent, and so distinct from the world's other varieties that little or no internal differentiation needs to be discerned. A preliminary examination of the gardens of Sichuan, however, reveals differences in style, engineering, patronage, and function so different from this norm that further study of the regionalization of Chinese gardens seems imperative.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Art History, School of Art.

Contemporary Chinese Political Economy in Historical Perspective

R. Bin Wong is Director of the UCLA Asia Institute and Professor of History.  Wong’s research has examined Chinese patterns of political, economic and social change, especially since eighteenth century, both within Asian regional contexts and compared with more familiar European patterns.  Among his books, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Cornell University Press, 1997) also appears in Chinese as 转变的中国 （江苏人民出版社, 1998.  Wong has also written or co-authored some sixty articles published in North America, East Asia and Europe, published in Chinese, English, French and Japanese in journals that reach diverse audiences within and beyond academia.

This presentation will lay out three different historical perspectives on China’s post-1978 economic reform era.  It argues that historical perspectives allow us to apprehend features of the Chinese economy as they are formed in particular moments and contexts at the same time as we can appreciate the ways in which the possibilities conceived and achieved both affirm certain past practices and reject others.  Without such vantage points it is more difficult to explain the manner in which China’s economy has changed in the past thirty years.

The Political Economy of Spatially Uneven Internet Development in China

Dr. Jun Zhang is an assistant professor in the Geography Department, National University of Singapore. He received his B.S. and M.S. at Peking University and Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota in 2007. His major research interests include globalization and uneven development, institutional and technological change, and the political economy of China’s market transition.

China’s Internet industry has been developing rapidly from scratch in the past decade. This development is enabled and constrained by a uniquely emerging regulatory regime within China’s broader process of market transition and global integration under the banner of socialism. Under such a hybrid regime with both capitalist and socialist features, a highly spatially-uneven pattern of Internet service provision has been evolving due to the interplay of place-dependence and path-dependence. Such a process of spatial polarization of the Internet sector on the supply side is also intertwined with the same process on its demand side; both are shaped by, and contributing to, the general socio-spatial polarization effects under the hybrid political regime.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Geography.

Brown Bag Lunch Talk:

The U.S. Response to Terrorism

Dr. Zhang Jiadong is an associate professor in the Program on Arms Control and Regional Security, Center for American Studies at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. From 1999 to 2001, Dr. Zhang did postgraduate studies on the separatist issue at Yunnan University.  Between 2001 and 2004, he completed his doctoral studies focused on terrorism and anti-terrorism at Fudan University. He has published two books: On Terrorism (Beijing: Shishi Publisher, 2007) and Terrorism and Governance in the Era of Globalization (Shanghai Sanlian Shudian, 2007), and dozens of papers on the terrorism issue and other related topics.

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, and also not a new threat to the U.S. Since the “9·11” of 2001, the U.S. has contributed many resources——military, diplomatic, and economic——to fight against terrorism at home and abroad. Unfortunately, the U.S. does not protect itself effectively without compromising its domestic liberty and international image. The U.S. just over-responds to terrorist threats and replaces terrorism threats by conventional military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and places strict controls on trade and transportation. Terrorism is not an isolated phenomenon. No country can find a specific strategy against it without considering its domestic social and international political environment. If the U.S. really sees terrorism as a main or severe threat, she should reshape her national security strategy and foreign policy. And eventually, Americans should reconstitute their world view.

Co-sponsored by the UW China Studies Program and IGRSS (Institute for Global and Regional Security Studies).

Film Showing and Discussion of "Red Snow"

Paul G. Pickowicz is professor of history and Chinese studies at UC San Diego.  His research emphasis is on popular culture, rural studies and the history of Chinese filmmaking.  His most recent books are Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China (Yale, 2005), The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History (Stanford 2006), From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China (Roman and Littlefield, 2006), and Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People's Republic of China (Harvard, 2007).

Red Snow (Hongse xue) / (Drama)

Director: Peng Tao, (2006, 110 minutes)

In Chinese with English subtitles.

This underground feature film, made on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, tells the disturbing story of the Cultural Revolution by focusing on the extraordinary experiences of a North China village widow who encounters a series of people "on the run" (a peasant widow, living alone in a remote and cold area, rescues a former official, a Red Guard leader, and a young runaway girl.)

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.  For questions, please contact eacenter@u.washington.edu or 206.543.6938.

Co-sponsored by the UW East Asia Center and China Studies Program.

Underground and Independent Filmmaking in China: More Important Than State Sector Productivity?

Paul G. Pickowicz is professor of history and Chinese studies at UC San Diego.  His research emphasis is on popular culture, rural studies and the history of Chinese filmmaking.  His most recent books are Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China (Yale, 2005), The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History (Stanford 2006), From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China (Roman and Littlefield, 2006), and Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People's Republic of China (Harvard, 2007).

This will be a multi-media presentation that surveys a wide range of underground and independent filmmaking activities in China since 2000 - - with special emphasis on social and political thrust.

Artmaking in Two Cultures

Li Huai received her BA in fine arts at the Beijing Film Academy in 1982 and her MFA in art at the California Institute of the Arts in 1990.  She is on the faculty of the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego.  Li Huai's specialties include installation,painting, drawing, mixed media and Chinese calligraphy.  In thematic terms, her work deals with various issues related to East-West cultural interaction in an increasingly transnational world, including issues involving the Asian diaspora.  Her work has been shown in various national and international venues in the US, Japan, Mexico, Canada, China, South Africa, and Italy.

"Artmaking in Two Cultures" deals with my experiences as an artist who has worked in strikingly different cultural environments.  My presentation will deal with issues in the fundamental training of young artists in China and in the United States.  To illustrate my points about cross-cultural dynamics, I will make specific reference to the field of figurative drawing.

Co-sponsored by the UW China Studies Program and the Painting and Drawing Program, School of Art.

Is China Abolishing the Hukou System?

Kam Wing Chan is a Professor in Geography at the University of Washington. His research focuses on urbanization, migration, and the household registration system in China. He has also served as a consultant to various international organizations on policy issues in China.

In China, the household registration (hukou) system is no small thing. It is a cornerstone of China's infamous "cities with invisible walls" and a major source of injustice and inequality, perhaps also the most crucial foundation of China's social and spatial stratification. In recent years, China has instituted a variety of reforms to its hukou system. There is a general perception that the latest round of reform initiatives meant to abolish the hukou system, and that rural residents would soon be "granted urban rights." This presentation clarifies the basic operations of the hukou system in light of recent reforms to examine the validity of these claims. It will be pointed out that confusion over the functional operations of the hukou system and the subtleties of the hukou lexicon have contributed to the overstated interpretation of the initiatives. The cumulative effect of these reforms is not abolition of the hukou, but devolution of responsibility for hukou policies to local governments, which in many cases actually makes permanent migration of peasants to cities harder than before.

Bamo Ayi, anthropologist and scholar of comparative religion; deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Department, State Nationalities Commission, and professor of philosophy at Central Nationalities University, Beijing.

Stevan Harrell, anthropologist and translator; professor of anthropology at the University of Washington and former curator of Asian ethnology, Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

Ma Lunzy, ethnologist, historian, author, and curator; deputy director of Liangshan Minorities Research Institute.

New Books in Print Series ~ Fieldwork Connections:

The Fabric of Ethnographic Collaboration in China and America"

Ma Lunzy and Bamo Ayi are from Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China, where the three met while working and studying the people of this region. Their book is a look at the collaborative nature of ethnographic anthropology and will be of great interest to scholars of China, anthropology, art, and general Asian studies.

Fieldwork Connections tells the story of the intertwined research histories of three anthropologists working in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China in the late twentieth century. Chapters are written alternately by a male American anthropologist, a male researcher raised in a village in Liangshan, and a highly educated woman from an elite Nuosu/Chinese family. As decades of mutual ethnographic research unfold, the authors enter one another's narratives and challenge the reader to ponder the nature of ethnographic "truth."

Book sales will be provided by the University of Washington Press and the authors will be on-hand to sign copies.  This book, too, is significant in that it's one of the first to address global anthropological concerns and the cooperation that grows between academics.

Sponsored by the UW Simpson Center for the Humanities and supported by the UW China Studies Program.

For more information, please visit http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/calendar.php#top

Taiwan: New Perspectives and Viewpoints

Bruce Jacobs was educated at Columbia University and National Taiwan University. He has conducted considerable field research in both Taiwan and China and has published books, chapters, and refereed journal articles. He has also written many op-ed columns for US, Australian and Taiwan newspapers.

The presentation re-examines Taiwan's history in light of competing claims and the foreign policies of several countries. It suggests some new policy options for Taiwan.

Taiwan Film Festival

Friday, October 19

6:30-7:00 PM, Introduction

Lecture by Yomi Braester, Professor of Asian Languages and Literature

Communications, Room 120

7:00 PM

Eternal Summer (95 min)

9:00 PM

Shonenko (64 min)

Saturday, October 20

4:00 PM

The Touch of Fate (90 min)

5:30 PM, Reception

Communication, Room 126

6:30 PM

Blue Cha Cha (108 min), Q & A with director after screening

9:00 PM

Vision of Darkness (49 min), Q & A with producer after screening

Sunday, October 21

4:00 PM

The Affairs of Three Cities: The Game (56 min), Q & A with director and producer after screening

6:00 PM

Three Times (120 min)

8:30 PM

Amour Legend (118 min)

Sponsored by the UW East Asia Center, China Studies Program and Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Seattle. 

For more information, please visit http://2007tff.blogspot.com/search/label/Schedule, call 206.543.6938 or email eacenter@u.washington.edu

General Seating: 6:30-6:45 p.m. (Space is limited - Please arrive early)

Dr. Jaushieh Joseph Wu, Representative, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the United States (TECRO)

Taiwan and the U.S.:

Allies of interest in security, prosperity, and democracy

Dr. Jaushieh Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) arrived in Washington, D.C. on April 15, 2007 to assume his responsibilities as Taiwan’s chief representative to the United States. Representative Wu graduated from National Chengchi University, one of Taiwan’s most prestigious higher education institutions, with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science in 1978. He then enrolled in the University of Missouri in St. Louis in 1982, obtaining a master’s degree in Political Science, followed by a Ph. D. in the same field from Ohio State University in 1989. Upon returning to Taiwan, Representative Wu held a number of academic positions at his alma mater, National Chengchi University, including the chairmanship of the First Division of the Institute of International Relations.

In 2002, Representative Wu began his government career as Deputy Secretary-General to President Chen Shui-bian, a position he held until May 2004. From 2004 to April 2007, Representative Wu was the chairman of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, a ministry-level organization that coordinates and implements Taiwan’s policies toward the People’s Republic of China. He is currently the representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, D.C.

Representative Wu’s areas of specialization include Taiwan’s political development, cross-strait relations, international relations, and Middle East politics. Among Dr. Wu’s academic publications, he has authored Taiwan’s Democratization: Forces Behind the New Momentum (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1995), and edited Divided Nations: The Experience of Germany, Korea, and China (Taipei, Institute of International Relations, 1995) and China Rising: Implications of Economic and Military Growth of the PRC (Taipei, Institute of International Relations, 2001).

'China Who Makes and Fakes: A Semiotics of the Counterfeit

Laikwan Pang received her doctorate degree in Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. She is Associate Professor of cultural studies in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is the author of Building a New China in Cinema: The Chinese Left-wing Cinema Movement, 1932-37 (Rowman and Littlefield 2002), Cultural Control and Globalization in Asia: Copyright, Piracy, and Cinema (Routledge, 2006) and The Distorting Mirror: Visual Modernity in China (University of Hawaii Press, 2007). Her current research includes writing a new book manuscript on China's creative economy as well as a project (co-investigated with Chris Berry) on remapping the studies of Chinese Cinema.

The rise of the Intellectual Property Rights regime and the recent worldwide condemnation on China's piracy activities are both related to the advent of the Creative Economy. Professor Pang’s paper is an investigation on the fervant desire of China to embrace the Creative Economy, and how the actual cultural and economic activities are subversive or indifferent to the late-capitalist tendency of privatization and commodification of culture. This paper focuses primarily on those activities that work against the IPRs ruling, and it analyzes how the counterfeit product could demythologize the relation between China and piracy.