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
TBA
Peng Peng, Assistant Professor of Political Science & Global Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
TBA
Yanbai Andrea Wang, Assistant Professor of Law, Penn Carey Law
Pensions and the Politics of Retirement Age Reform in China
Mark Frazier, Professor of Politics, New School for Social Research
Raising legal retirement ages, also known as retirement age reform, is politically contentious worldwide, but it should be more easily pursued in non-democratic regimes that can effectively deter opponents from…
The Authoritarian Commons: Neighborhood Democratization in Urban China
Shitong Qiao, Professor of Law, Duke University
Based on six-year fieldwork across China including over 200 in-depth interviews, Qiao’s new book The…
China and Climate Change: Transnational Science, Politics, and Policy in Historical Perspectives
Zuoyue Wang, Professor of History, California State Polytechnic University
Negotiating Legality: Chinese Companies in the US Legal System
Ji Li, John S. & Marilyn Long Chair of US-China Business and Law, UC Irvine
Despite escalating geopolitical rivalry, the US and China continue to be economically intertwined. Numerous Chinese companies have made substantial investments in the US and are reluctant to exit this strategically…
From Empire to Nation-State: War, Emulation, and National Identity in China
Jie Yang, Professor of Anthropology, Simon Fraser University
This article examines when, why, and how national identity emerged in China. We argue that war acted as a catalyst for two distinct psychological mechanisms: enmity (humiliation and other negative emotions) and…
TBA
Elizabeth Wishnick, Senior Research Scholar, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Past Speaker Series
Planning Healthy Cities in China
Wang Lan, Chair Professor of Healthy City Science and Planning, Tongji University
Co-sponsored by Penn Institute of Urban Research
Professor Lan Wang’s research focuses on the mechanisms of urban built environment affecting…
WeChat, Diaspora, and a New Chinese Transnationalism
Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Cultural Anthropology, University of Technology, Sydney
Co-sponsored by Center on Digital Culture and Society, Annenberg School for Communication…
Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics: How Economic Bureaucrats Make Policies and Remake the Chinese State
Yingyao Wang, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia
Professor Wang will discuss her new book titled Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics: How Economic Bureaucrats…
High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy
Angela Zhang, Associate Professor of Law, University of Hong Kong
Co-sponsored by Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition, Penn Carey Law.
China has long been recognized as a powerhouse in cultivating Big Tech firms, emerging as a formidable rival to…
The Rise of Foreign Relations Law in China: Conceiving Law and the World
Chen Yifeng, Associate Professor, Peking University Law School
China’s enactment of a Foreign Relations Law in 2023 is an important move towards legalization of China’s conduct of foreign relations. The law is a milestone in its consolidating several earlier law-making endeavors…
Political Centralization under Xi Jinping: Strategic Adaptation by Local Cadres
Jessica Teets, Professor of Political Science, Middlebury College
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…
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
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…
The Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class
Teemu Ruskola, Professor of Law, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania
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…
China's State-Owned Enterprises: Leadership, Reform, and Internationalization
Wendy Leutert, Assistant Professor of International Studies, Indiana University
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…
The 20th Party Congress: Toward Personalistic Autarky?
Joseph Fewsmith, Professor of International Relations and Political Science, Boston University
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.…
