East Asia Center
East
Asia Resource Center
East
Asia Library
Anthropology
Art
History
Asian
Languages & Lit.
Geography
History
Political
Science
Sociology
Jackson School
Office of Student Services
UW Home
East
Asia Home
|
China Colloquia
Current
colloquia for the 2005-2006 academic year are listed here.
[November]
[December] [January]
[February] [March]
[April] [May]
July]
For
past colloquia, please check the following links:
[1998-1999]
[1999-2000]
[2000-2001]
[2001-2002]
[2002-2003]
[2003-2004]
[2004-2005]
|
JANUARY 19, 2006 |
|
Thursday,
3:30-5:00 p.m. |
|
Thomson Hall, Room 317 |
|
David Bachman, Professor, International Studies, The Henry M.
Jackson School of International Studies, University of
Washington |
Aspects of
the Political History of the
People’s Republic of China,
1958-1965:
The Use of
Law, Elite Transformation, and
Preparing for War
|
David Bachman is a professor of Chinese politics and foreign policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. He is also the associate director of the Jackson School. Until July 2003, he served as the Chair of the China Studies Program at the University of Washington for eleven years. He is the author of Bureaucracy, Economy, and Leadership in China, Chen Yun and the Chinese Political System [an authorized Chinese translation of which appeared in 2002], and co-editor of Yan Jiaqi and China’s Struggle for Democracy. Professor Bachman has written about 50 articles and book chapters on Chinese domestic and foreign policy, China’s political economy, and Sino-American relations. He is currently working on a book on defense industrialization in China, 1949-1985, and projects related to China’s rise in Asia. He served as president of the Washington State China Relations Council in 2005. He is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and the Pacific Council on International Policy.
Professor Bachman's talk will focus on the first draft of a paper he presented at a China Quarterly Conference in October 2005 on Rethinking the History of the People's Republic of China, 1949-1976. The paper focuses not on the elite political history of the 1958-1965 but on alternative elements that contribute to the history of the PRC during this period. In particular, it concentrates on the use of courts and what this indicates about state-society relations in China (as found in the very extensive use of legal institutions in the administration of CCP rule), patterns arguing for the need to revivify the leadership of the CCP prior to 1966, and how a major theme of the 1958-1965 was China's interactions with the outside world, in particular, China's near constant mobilization for war during this period.
|
JANUARY 5, 2006 |
|
Thursday,
3:30-5:00 p.m. |
|
Thomson Hall, Room 317 |
|
Laurie Duthie, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of
California, Los Angeles |
White Collar China:
Global Capitalism and the Formation of a New
Social Identity in Urban China
|
Laurie Duthie is
a doctoral
candidate with
the Department
of Anthropology
at the
University of
California, Los
Angeles. Her
research
interests
include class,
work, and global
capitalism in
urban China.
Prior to her
graduate
studies, Laurie
consulted
multinational
corporations in
Shanghai on
various human
resources and
management
issues.
White Collar
executives
working for
foreign-invested
multinational
corporations (MNCs)
are a new status
group in
contemporary
China. High
salaries,
prestigious
degrees, and
affluent
lifestyles all
contribute to
their standing
as winners in
post-reform
China. Yet their
rise to success
is hardly the
result of an
unfettered
market and is
deeply enmeshed
with the timing
of economic
reform, economic
policies of the
1990s, post-1989
political
ideologies, and
the market-entry
strategies of
MNCs. These
factors have led
to an
age-specific
class segment,
with the vast
majority of
white collars
ranging in age
from 22 – 35.
Utilizing two
years of
ethnographic
research and
interviews with
more than 100
executives
(2000-2005),
this research
explores the
emergence of
China’s “white
collars” as a
social
identity. The
white collar
lifestyles
currently being
carved out in
the changing
landscapes of
urban China
reflect not only
the political
economy within
which white
collars entered
the labor
market, but also
signal new
understandings
of what it means
to be Chinese in
the global
capitalist
arena.
|
DECEMBER 8, 2005 |
|
Thursday,
3:30-5:00 p.m. |
|
Denny Hall, Room 401 |
|
Feng Xu, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of
Victoria, BC |
|
Building Community in China:
Towards Local Democratic Governance?
|
Feng Xu (PhD, York
[Toronto]) is
assistant professor
in East Asia
Politics at the
Department of
Political Science,
University of
Victoria, Victoria,
Canada. Her book,
Women Migrant
Workers and China’s
Economic Reform
(Macmillan/Palgrave,
2000), investigated
the lives and
survival strategies
of employees and
managers in silk
factories of
southern Jiangsu
province. She is
currently
researching a new
project on
neo-liberal
governmentality in
China.
The question of
governance in China
during its
“transition to
market economy” is
an important and
urgent task facing
the Chinese state,
as the survival of
one-party rule is at
stake. Unemployment
facing urban Chinese
is worsening as
state-owned
enterprises (SOEs)
are undergoing
privatization. As a
result, the work
unit (danwei)
as social control
mechanism is losing
its grip. What is
the new social
control mechanism in
the emerging market
economy? This
presentation looks
specifically at the
state’s effort to
promote community
building in urban
China as a new space
of governance.
Community building
is to move away from
the model of direct
government actions
in all aspects of
people’s lives down
to the neighborhood
and families and
toward a model of
community
self-governance.
What is emerging in
the thinking and
practice of
governance in China
is its adoption of
global neo-liberal
governance,
influenced by “new
public management”.
Because community
building is seen to
be part of an effort
to build civil
society, it is often
hailed as a sign of
democratization in
post-socialist China
by both Chinese
scholars and
international
scholars as well as
international donor
agencies.
This presentation
joins other scholars
(N. Rose; Z. Bauman)
in taking a critical
stand on the global
discovery of
“community”, and
argue that community
building in China
serves to 1)
off-load social
responsibility to
individuals in
community by calling
on individuals to be
“responsible” and
“active” citizens;
2) enabling the
state to demonstrate
that it is building
local democracy by
empowering citizens
to govern themselves
in community,
without having to
forego the one-party
rule.
|
NOVEMBER 3, 2005 |
|
Thursday,
7:00 p.m. |
|
Petersen Room, Allen Library |
|
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Authors |
|
Discussion of their recent biography, "MAO"
|
Jung Chang's WILD
SWANS was an extraordinary bestseller
throughout the world. Now she and her
husband Jon Halliday have written a
groundbreaking biography of Mao Tse-tung.
Based on a decade of research, and on
interviews with many of Mao's close circle
in China who have never talked before - and
with virtually everyone outside China who
had significant dealings with him - this is
the most authoritative life of Mao ever
written. It is full of startling
revelations, exploding the myth of the Long
March, and showing a completely unknown Mao.
Combining meticulous history with the
story-telling style of WILD SWANS this
biography makes immediate Mao's
roller-coaster life, as he intrigued and
fought every step of the way to force
through his unpopular decisions. This is an
entirely fresh look at Mao in both content
and approach. It will astonish historians
and the general reader alike!
~Random House
Co-sponsored by the East
Asia Center, University Book Store and China
Studies Program.
|
NOVEMBER 3, 2005 |
|
Thursday,
3:30-5:00 p.m. |
|
Simpson Center, Communications Room 226 |
|
Wang Ning,
Director of Comparative
Literature and Cultural Studies at Tsinghua University and
Visiting Professor, University of Illinois |
|
Postmodernity, and Postcoloniality in the Age of
Globalization:
A Chinese Cultural and Literary Perspective
|
Wang
Ning is
Professor
of
English
and
Comparative
Literature
and
Director
of the
Center
for
Comparative
Literature
and
Cultural
Studies
at
Tsinghua
University.
He is
also the
editor
of the
Chinese
edition
of
New
Literary
History
and
Critical
Inquiry.
Apart from
his 11
books
and
numerous
articles
in
Chinese,
he has
also
published
extensively
in such
international
prestigious
journals
as
New
Literary
History,
Critical
Inquiry,
boundary
2,
Comparative
Literature
Studies,
Canadian
Review
of
Comparative
Literature,
Neohelicon,
and many
others.
His most
recent
English
publication
is
Globalization
and
Cultural
Translation
(2004).
In
current
China,
to
discuss
the
issue of
globalization
in
regard
to those
of
postmodernity
and
postcoloniality
has been
attracting
the
attention
of
almost
all the
literary
and
cultural
scholars
since
the late
1990s.
Actually,
since
the
beginning
of the
1980s,
the
issue of
the
postmodern
or
postmodernism
has been
attractive
to some
avant-garde
Chinese
artists,
literary
critics
and
scholars
of
cultural
and
literary
studies.
Through
heated
theoretic
discussions,
dialogues
and even
debates,
scholars
have
come to
agree
that
postmodernism
is no
longer a
unique
phenomenon
in the
Western
post-industrial
society,
for it
has long
gone
beyond
the
limitation
of
historical
periodization
and
generated
some
metamorphosed
versions
in those
under-developed
and
developing
Oriental
and
Third
World
countries,
including
China.
Although
the
prime of
its life
has
become
an
immediate
past
along
with the
rise of
postcolonial
critical
trends
and the
critical
reaction
on it in
the
context
of
Cultural
Studies,
postmodernism
is still
heatedly
discussed
in
regard
to its
critical
and
creative
reception
in the
Chinese
context
along
with the
scholars’
recent
interest
in the
issue of
globalization
concerning
the
current
Chinese
practice.
In
offering
his
reflections
on
issues
of
global
postmodernity
and
postcoloniality,
the
author
will
analyze
these
phenomena
from a
Chinese
cultural
and
literary
perspective
from
which
some
theoretic
dialogues
could be
carried
on at
the
level of
postmodernity
and
postcoloniality
in an
age of
globalization,
and
starting
with
which
some
Chinese
cultural
and
intellectual
strategies
could be
put
forward
in the
face of
Western
influence.
The
author
will
offer
his own
reconstruction
of
globalization
from a
Marxist
perspective.
Co-sponsored by the China
Studies Program and Department of Comparative
Literature.
|
OCTOBER 27, 2005 |
|
Thursday,
3:30-5:00 p.m. |
|
Denny Hall, Room 401 |
|
Yuezhi Zhao, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in
Political Economy of Global Communication, School of Communication, Simon
Fraser University, Canada |
|
Breaking the "No Debate: Curse? Economic Reform, Social
Justice, and Communication Politics in China
|
Yuezhi Zhao completed her Ph.D. in 1996 and
is the author of Media, Market, and
Democracy in
China: Between the Party Line and the
Bottom Line (1998), the co-author of
Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the
Politics of Objectivity (1998), and the
co-editor of Democratizing Global Media:
One World, Many Struggles (2005). She
is currently completing a book manuscript
entitled Communication, Power, and
Contestation in China: When the Bottom Line Is the
Party Line.
Post-1989 economic reforms in
China have been implemented under
Deng’s “no debate” regime of public
communication. This regime prohibited media
debates on the political and social
implications of the economic reforms and
effectively installed a Chinese version of
neo-liberalism in economic and social
developments in the country. In late 2004,
however, an unprecedented debate on
state-owned enterprise reform erupted in the
Chinese media and cyberspace, threatening to
break Deng’s “no debate” curse and challenge
the hegemony of neo-liberalism in Chinese
economic discourse. Using this debate as a
case study, this talk analyses the structure
and dynamics of discursive contestation
among elite and popular social forces over
the future directions of
China’s reform process. It
highlights the highly stratified and
fragmented nature of China’s media and Internet discourses and
discusses their possibilities and limits in
foregrounding a social justice agenda in China’s ongoing political economic
transformation.
|
OCTOBER 25, 2005 |
|
Tuesday,
4:30 - 6:00 p.m. |
|
Allen Auditorium,
Allen Library |
|
Merle Goldman,
Professor Emerita of History, Boston University |
|
Discussion of her recent book "From Comrade to Citizen: the
Struggle for Political Rights in China"
|
Professor Goldman is the author of numerous
books, edited volumes, and articles on modern Chinese history,
particularly of Chinese Communist history. She is the co-author
with John K. Fairbank of China: A New History, Enlarged
Edition, updated in 2005. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence
College (BA), Radcliffe College (MA) and Harvard University
(PhD).
From Comrade to Citizen: the Struggle for Political Rights in
China
analyzes the changes in the role of public intellectuals in the
post-Mao era and how their use of the language of "rights"
spread from the intellectuals to workers, farmers and ordinary
citizens.
|
OCTOBER 14, 2005 |
|
Friday,
7:00 p.m. |
|
Parrington
Hall, The Forum |
|
Ha Jin,
renowned author,
National Book Award winner and two time Pen-Faulkner award
winner. |
|
Discussion of his most recent book
"War Trash"
|
War Trash is
perhaps Ha Jin’s most ambitious work to date: a powerful, unflinching
story that opens a window on an unknown aspect of a little-known war—the
experiences of Chinese POWs held by Americans during the Korean conflict—and
paints an intimate portrait of conformity and dissent against a sweeping
canvas of confrontation. Set in 1951 and based on historical accounts,
“War Trash” takes the form of the memoir of Yu Yuan, a young Chinese
army officer, a "volunteer" fighting unofficially in Korea when he is
captured. Yu's fluency in English thrusts him into the role of
unofficial interpreter in the psychological warfare
—
between the prisoners and their captors and between rival groups of
prisoners —
that defines the world of the POW camp. Yu's only allegiance is to his
dream of returning home. But by the end of this unforgettable novel, the
very concept of home will be more profoundly altered than Yu can even
begin to imagine.
~Random House
Cosponsored by the East
Asia Center and the University Book Store.
|
OCTOBER 13, 2005 |
|
Thursday,
3:30-5:00 p.m. |
|
Denny Hall, Room 401 |
|
Wen-Hsin Yeh, Professor, Department of History, University of
California, Berkeley |
|
Honorable
Pursuits: Commerce, Classics, and the Republican Chinese
Academia
|
Wen-hsin Yeh is Richard H.
and Laurie C. Morrison Chair Professor in History at the University of
California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Alienated Academy:
Culture and Politics in Republican China (Harvard, 1990 & 2000),
Provincial Passages: Culture, Space, and the Origin of Chinese
Communism (California, 1996), and Shanghai Splendor: A
Cultural History, 1843-1945 (California, forthcoming). She is also
editor of half a dozen books including Becoming Chinese: Passages
to Modernity and Beyond, 1900-1950 (California). Her current
research focuses on the history of knowledge in China's 20th century.
Professor Yeh's talk and paper
examine the development of two fields of study, "Commerce" (shangxue)
and Classics" (guoxue), that commanded much interest and prestige
in Chinese academia in the Republican period.
The teaching of business in Chinese universities was a matter of
recent (20th-century) origin, urban (Shanghai) constituency, and foreign
(American and Japanese) influence and inspiration.
The study of Chinese "national" (guo) history and
classics, on the other hand, was a pursuit of venerable genealogy, elite
backing, and rich indigenous resources. Both fields of study engaged
the modern issue of China's self-fashioning in a multi-civilizational
world. This talk and paper
examine the differential terms of Chinese intellectual negotiation with
the politics of imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
|
|
|
