Special Events

Thursday, February 12, 2009 12:15 pm
Special Event
Imposing States: How External Intervention Kept China Whole
Ja Ian Chong, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, Princeton University.

About the talk: Ja Ian Chong examined how external intervention helped preserve the viability of a single Chinese state during the late Qing and early Republic even as the same phenomenon also spurred persistent fractionalization. In locating the development of the modern Chinese state within the international context of the time, the perspective taken in Ja Ian Chong's presentation engaged existing work on political consolidation in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China. By highlighting the dynamics of major power rivalry and local collaboration with foreign actors, Dr. Chong discussed the broader empirical and theoretical implications of external intercession into domestic politics.

About the speaker: Ja Ian Chong holds bachelor's and master's degrees from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and received his PhD in politics from Princeton University. His current research explains how major power competition and external intervention shape the institutions of governance and rule in weak polities by examining China, Indonesia, and Thailand from the late- nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Dr. Chong previously worked with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore, the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, and served as an infantry officer in the Singapore Armed Forces. His English and Chinese publications have appeared in Asian Affairs, China Review International, the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies Working Paper Series, as well as edited volumes and newspapers. His research received support from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Society of Fellows, the Bradley Foundation, and the Sasakawa Foundation.

Thursday, March 12, 2009 5:30 pm
Special Event
Yu Hua will read from his novel, Brothers, followed by a conversation with Gish Jen, Brandeis University, author of The Love Wife and Typical American; Ha Jin, Boston University, author of
A Free Life and Waiting; Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, Harvard University, translator of Brothers; and Carlos Rojas, Duke University, translator of Brothers

About the book: Brothers is a big, spirited comedy of society running amok in modern China. Song Gang and Baldy Li are very different, though united in their love of the beautiful Lin Hong, and as their fortunes rise and fall over the decades, Yu Hua paints an extraordinary portrait of modern China through the eyes of these two brothers.

About the author: Yu Hua was born in 1960 in Zhejiang, China. He has published four novels, six collections of stories, and three collections of essays. In 2002, Yu Hua became the first Chinese writer to win the prestigious James Joyce Foundation Award. His novel To Live was awarded the Premio Grinzane Cavour (1998), and To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant were named two of the last decade's ten most influential books in China. Yu Hua lives in Beijing.

March 17 to May 3, 2009
Special Event
Contemporary Ink Art Evolution
Chinese ink painting, long marked by traditional artists’ reverence for ancient masters, sensitivity to natural forms, and search for individual inspiration, underwent a renaissance in the twentieth century, when established masters and young artists alike began to rethink long-established tenets. Moving from subtle variation on classical forms to radical experimentation with material and techniques, these artists sought to redefine the essential meaning of ink art. They sought to modernize by confronting the challenges to ink painting posed by Western art styles and techniques while fostering conceptual dialogue in the international art arena and opening exciting new directions for personal expression. Contemporary Chinese ink painting is the result of efforts to critique traditional forms and techniques and extend the boundaries of personal expression while decrying wholesale Westernization. The artists represented in this exhibition are major figures in the contemporary revival of Chinese ink painting. Their works have transcended traditional boundaries, adding a new and vibrant chapter to a long artistic heritage. Artists include Liu Kuo-sung • Hsiao Chin • Qiu Deshu Xu Bing • G.Y. Wu • Wang Tiande • Lan Zhenghui • Qin Feng.

This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Beijing, and curated by Ping Jie. Its installation at Harvard University is co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, with much appreciated support from volunteers of the CGIS Arts Network.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009  4:15 pm
Special Event
Post-Mao Dreaming: Chinese Contemporary Art
A Slide Presentation and Talk with Joan Lebold Cohen and Jerome A. Cohen
This exhibition, currently at the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton, MA, provides a window into the era when Chinese artists, emerging from the constraints of 30 years of Maoist Communism (1949–1979), began to reclaim their individuality. The Cohens witnessed both the excessive restrictions of the late-Mao period and the gradually increasing freedom artists achieved. Many of the works in the exhibition date to the late 1970s and early 1980s, a time of transition in Chinese art. The political thaw of this period allowed a shift from state-mandated socialist realism to the exploration of historical Chinese art forms (such as ink painting) that paralleled innovations in form and subject matter. Post-Mao Dreaming features works produced between 1971 and 2005 by key artists of the period, representing both the reclamation of tradition and the breaking of new artistic ground.

Joan Lebold Cohen, art historian/photographer, has been writing about contemporary Chinese art and curating exhibitions since the 1970s. Her book, New Chinese Painting, 1949-1986, was the first book to introduce the new generation of artists after the Cultural Revolution.

Jerome A. Cohen is the founding director of East Asian Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. Currently, he is Professor of Law at New York University and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Asia Studies at the Council of Foreign Relations and Of Counsel at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison.

    
 

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
April 9, 10, and 11, 2009
Special Event
Emergent Visions: New Independent Documentaries from China

Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Harvard East Asia Society, the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, and the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts

Thursday, April 9

Screening and discussion with director Xu Xin             
Torch Troupes (Huo ba de Ju), 110 min.
Screening                                                          
Bing’A, 120 min., directed by Feng Yan

Friday, April 10

Panel Discussion
Professor Eileen Chow, Harvard University
Professor Lu Xinyu, Fudan University
Professor Markus Nornes, University of Michigan
Zhu Rikun, Curator and Critic, Li Xianting Film Foundation  

Screening
Crime and Punishment, 123 min., directed by Zhao Liang
Screening and discssion with director Zhao Xun
Two Seasons (Liang ge Jijie), 138 min.
Screening and discussion with director Wang Wo
Outside (Waimian), 86 min.

Saturday, April 11

Screening
Ghost Town,180 min., directed by Zhao Dayong
Screening and Discussion with director Xu Xin
Fangshan Church (Fangshan Jiaotang), 80 min.
Screening and discussion with director Wang Wo
Noise (Renao), 62 min.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Special Guest Series
Famine and Socialism: Exploring the Cases of China and the Soviet Union
Felix Wemheuer

About the Talk: Despite the fact that the communist movement promised to abolish hunger, famines managed to occur several times under state socialism. Russia experienced a famine from 1919 to 1921, as did the Soviet Union from 1931 to 1933 and again in 1947. Famines also occurred in the People's Republic of China (1959-1961). Professor Wemheuer compared the Soviet and the Chinese cases, raising questions of why these famines took place and what distinguishes "socialist" famines from famines elsewhere. He explored the pre-revolutionary experiences with famine relief, the role of the leadership, the rural-urban divide, and the relationship between the peasants and the party in both countries. He also analyzed discourses on hunger in China (1949-1958) and the Soviet Union (1928-1940). In this context, Professor Wemheuer explored how the definition of “enough food to make a living” became a highly political issue. In the end, he evaluated the capability of the socialist regimes to deal with malnutrition and famine.

About the Speaker: Felix Wemheuer received his MA in Politics of East Asia from Ruhr University of Bochum, Germany. From 2000 to 2002, he studied at the Institute for CCP History at the People's University of China, Beijing. During this time, he did field studies in villages in Henan regarding the Great Leap Forward. He received his PhD from the University of Vienna in 2006. He has published two monographs in German on intellectual and peasant memory of the Great Leap Forward. His current research at Harvard is titled "The Politicization of Hunger: Discourses of Food and State-Peasant Relationships in Socialist China and the Soviet Union." In 2009, the conference volume on "New Perspectives on the Great Forward and the Famine" (together with Kimberley Manning) will be published by University Press of British Columbia. Another conference volume on "Hunger, Nutrition and Rationing under State Socialism" is accepted for publication by University Press of Leipzig.


Thursday, July 23, 2009   12:15 pm
Summer Guest Series
Jialiang Xu
Visiting Scholar, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies; Professor of Public Administration, School of Management, and Director of the Center for Civil Society and Local Governance, Beijing Normal University
China’s Environmental NGOs and Public Policy:
Three Case Studies

About the Talk: Professor Xu examined the role of China’s environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) during public policy implementation by introducing three cases: the Yuanmingyuan anti-seepage project, the Xiamen PX project, and the Nu River dam project. He used resource dependence theory to analyze environmental policy and the environmental movement in China. Professor Xu separated the Chinese environmental movement into three stages according to three dimensions: government relations, resource mobilization capability, and organizational-level activities. He asserts that environmental NGOs have played a leading role in promoting a more scientific and democratic government environmental decision-making in China. He raised issues such as  the lack of openness and participation in the government policy-making, which leads to lower efficiency in policy implementation and difficulties in achieving consensus with the public.

About the Speaker: Jialiang Xu received his PhD in politics from Peking University in 2002, and an MA in politics from Fudan University. His fields of interest include government regulation, public policy, civil society, environmental NGOs, government-society relations, and local governance.


Wednesday, July 29, 2009 12:15 pm
Summer Guest Series
Subramanian Swamy
The Global Financial Crisis and
the Implications for India and China

About the Talk:  The financial derivatives and sub-prime loans that created the current global crisis have affected the Chinese and Indian economies for different reasons, leading to a sharp decline in the growth rates of each country. Professor Swamy’s talk covered the different reasons for this decline and whether it was avoidable. He argues that although the impact in both economies is now contained by measures based on gigantic stimuli packages, these measures have aggravated the already festering financial system problems. Based on indices of macroeconomic stability, structural parameters, and institutional quality, Professor Swamy showed that if nothing is done to introduce certain financial sector reforms,  a much more serious financial crisis will occur in each of the two countries. He also referred to some political constraints in the two countries that might slow the introduction of these needed reforms.

About the Speaker: Dr. Subramanian Swamy received his PhD in economics from Harvard in1965. His dissertation was supervised by Nobel Laureate Simon Kuznets and was based on his jointly authored papers with Nobel Laureate Paul A. Samuelson of MIT on the theory of index numbers. He became Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard in 1964 and returned to India in 1970 to become Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Since 2001, he has returned every year to teach at the Harvard University Summer School. Dr. Swamy's primary field of interest in India is politics. He held a Cabinet Minister post twice and was elected to Parliament for five terms. Currently, he is the President of the Janata Party and Chairman of the Board of Governors of the School of Communications and Management Studies in Kochi, Kerala, India. In January 2008, he organized an international conference in Kerala on the India-China-U.S. Triangle to which both the Fairbank Center at Harvard and Tsinghua University lent their names and participated.


Thursday, July 30, 2009
12:15 p.m.
Special Lunchtime
Talk and Film Screening
Professor Yongdrol Tsongkha
Lanzhou University, Gansu Province, China
Research Associate, Indiana University
In the Steps of Joseph Rock:Exploring a Lost Tibetan Kingdom in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands
Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

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