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
(CANCELLED) Migration, Social Institutions, and Popular Resistance in Rural China
Yao Lu, Associate Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
How does migration shape collective resistance in migrant-sending communities (rural China)? This study integrates perspectives from social movements and migration to develop a framework in which migration…
2018 CHINA Town Hall
U.S.-China Relations: Can We Avoid Calamity?
The Honorable Condoleezza Rice, 66th U.S. Secretary of State and Former National Security Advisor; Douglas Spelman, Senior Advisor, Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Join communities across the United States in a national conversation on China. Featuring an interactive national webcast at 6pm with former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor…
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Barriers to Entry and Regional Economic Growth in China
Judith and Marshall Meyer Lectures on China’s Economy
Loren Brandt, Professor of Economics, University of Toronto
The non-state manufacturing sector has been the engine of China's economic transformation. Up through the mid-1990s, the sector exhibited large regional differences; subsequently we observe rapid convergence in…
Humans vs. Robots:
(Re)Valuating the Worth of Work in the Age of Automation
Ya-Wen Lei, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
This study addresses how business actors construct the worth of work in their effort to replace human workers with robots. Whereas existing literature takes for granted the valuation of unskilled manual work, I frame…
The Art of Political Repression in China
Dan Mattingly, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale University
This talk examines several remarkable, far-reaching efforts undertaken by the Chinese Communist Party to reshape Chinese society: state-led development projects that have displaced millions; the One Child Policy,…
A “Race to the Bottom” or Variegated Labor Regimes? Capital Mobility and Labor Politics in China’s Electronics Industry
Issues in Contemporary East Asia Colloquium Series
Lu Zhang, Associate Professor of Sociology and Global Studies, Temple University
A key debate over globalization concerns capital mobility, labor rights, and development prospects. A popular theme in the literature is that the hyper-mobility of capital from high-wage to low-wage areas in…
Hollywood Made in China
Aynne Kokas, Assistant Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia
China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 ignited a race to capture new global media audiences. Hollywood moguls began courting Chinese investors to create entertainment on an international scale—from…
Productive Force, Property Rights, and Land Law in China
Susan H. Whiting, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Washington
A prominent hypothesis in the political economy of development holds that secure property rights are a prerequisite for economic growth. This claim presents a puzzle in the Chinese case, where growth has been…
Mobilizing Without the Masses in China
Issues in Contemporary East Asia colloquium series
Diana Fu, Assistant Professor of Asian Politics, University of Toronto
When advocacy organizations are forbidden from rallying people to take to the streets, what do they do? When activists are detained for coordinating protests, are their hands ultimately tied? Based on political…
How the Chinese Communist Party Has Struggled with Managing Public Opinion and the Administration of Criminal Justice in the Internet Age
Ira Belkin, Executive Director, U.S.-Asia Law Institute
It is common in the United States and other societies for the public to focus on how justice should be served in individual cases and, occasionally, even to take to the streets to demand or protest a particular…
