Speaker Series

Each year, the CSCC invites leading experts to Penn to present their research and share their knowledge about contemporary China. Typically scheduled for Wednesday afternoons 4:30-6 pm, speakers will deliver their remarks and then entertain questions from the audience. Attendance is open to the entire Penn community. Announcements about upcoming talks will be posted on the CSCC website and disseminated via the Center’s listserv. To be added to the listserv, please visit our signup page https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/cscc-announce.

Upcoming Speaker Series



2024

China’s Role in the World in the Year of Elections

Kishore Mahbubani, Perry World House Visiting Fellow, Former President of the United Nations Security Council
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

As people around the world go to the polls and elect new government officials, leaders in Beijing may need to navigate new political landscapes around the world. Candidates in elections from Taiwan to the United…



2024

Political Centralization under Xi Jinping: Strategic Adaptation by Local Cadres

Jessica Teets, Professor of Political Science, Middlebury College
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

Xi Jinping has been centralizing policymaking and supervision of local cadres beginning in 2016. Using survey data of 1,500 cadres in 28 provinces, we analyze the impact of these institutional changes on local cadres…



2024

TBD

Chen Yifeng, Associate Professor, Peking University Law School
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St



2024

High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy

Angela Zhang, Associate Professor of Law, University of Hong Kong
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

Co-sponsored by Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition, Penn Carey Law.

Professor Zhang discusses her new book…



2024

Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts: Information, Ideology, and Authoritarian Rule in China

Jeremy Wallace, Professor of Government, Cornell University
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St



2024

Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics: How Economic Bureaucrats Make Policies and Remake the Chinese State

Yingyao Wang, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

Professor Wang will discuss her forthcoming book titled Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics: How Economic Bureaucrats Make Policies and Remake the Chinese State, by Columbia University Press. Her book…

Past Speaker Series



2024

The Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class

Teemu Ruskola, Professor of Law, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

This talk draws on a book project by the same title. It seeks to offer a structural account of the remarkable political and economic transformation of the Chinese working class since 1949. My title is a deliberate…



2024

China's State-Owned Enterprises: Leadership, Reform, and Internationalization

Wendy Leutert, Assistant Professor of International Studies, Indiana University
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

Why do Chinese state-owned enterprises routinely respond to central-level goals and policies in different ways, and why do their reform trajectories vary across firms and over time? This talk introduces a leadership…



2024

The 20th Party Congress: Toward Personalistic Autarky?

Joseph Fewsmith, Professor of International Relations and Political Science, Boston University
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

The Twentieth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, held in October 2022, will go down as the congress at which Xi Jinping secured a third term, perhaps opening the way for the restoration of life-long tenure.…



2024

Freedom Undone: The Assault on Liberal Values and Institutions in Hong Kong

Michael Davis, Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

A lot has been written about the 2019 protests in Hong Kong and the aggressive police crackdown offered in response. Much less has been written about the more severe assault on liberal values and institutions that…



2024

The Domestic Sources of the Deterioration in US-China Relations

DA Wei, Professor of International Relations, Director of the Center for International Security and Strategy, Tsinghua University
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

Domestic conditions have changed in dramatic fashion in both the US and China over the past two decades, leading to major shifts in domestic outlook and strategies. This talk will examine these shifts, respectively,…



2024

Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China

Lynette Ong, Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

How do states coerce citizens into compliance while simultaneously minimizing backlash? In Outsourcing…



2024

China's Gambit: The Calculus of Coercion

Ketian Zhang, Assistant Professor of International Security, George Mason University
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

Professor Ketian Zhang discusses her new book, China's Gambit: The Calculus of Coercion (Cambridge University…



2024

Hostage Diplomacy and U.S.-China Relations: The Legacy of The Peking Express

James Zimmerman, Partner, Perkins Coie LLP
- PCPSE Room 200, 133 S. 36th St

Co-organized by Center for East Asian Studies

We are pleased to announce a book talk by Beijing-based author and lawyer James Zimmerman about his book, The…



2023

‘Love Happens for a Reason in This World. So Does Hatred’: Affective Spaces as an Analytical Framework for the Study of Contemporary China

Shih-Diing Liu, Professor of Communication, University of Macau
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

In this presentation, I will elucidate how and why emotions and affect open up new avenues for understanding contemporary Chinese society, politics, and media. This discussion focuses on the analytical foundation for…



2023

Viewing History from the Inside: Key Episodes and Crises in US-China Relation, 1985-2020

John Culver, Former National Intelligence Officer for East Asia, retired CIA analyst, Atlantic Council Senior Fellow
- CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St

John K. Culver is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub and a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) senior intelligence officer with thirty-five years of experience as a leading…