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
David Nelson Rowe, China, and How the History of IR’s New Right Was Lost
Robert Vitalis, Professor of Political Science Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania
“Simply put, China was an integral part of what made the “New Right” new. –Joyce Mao
“Twenty years is about the length of time it takes a group of academics to storm the ramparts, take the…
China and Climate Change: Transnational Science, Politics, and Policy in Historical Perspectives
Zuoyue Wang, Professor of History, California State Polytechnic University
In the burgeoning field of historical studies of climate change, few studies exist that focus on Chinese policy making and US-China scientific interactions in the early years. In this talk I review Chinese public…
A Case for Dualism in the Chinese Legal System
Hualing Fu, Professor of Law, Warren Chan Professor in Human Rights and Responsibilities, University of Hong Kong
The Chinese legal system embodies a unique duality under a constitutional trinity: the Communist Party's leadership, responsiveness to popular demand, and legality. The Party's dominance is central, and its prerogative…
Guanchang Meixue: Heart Distress and Aesthetic Attunement in China’s Bureaucracy
Jie Yang, Professor of Anthropology, Simon Fraser University
The “aesthetic turn” in both political thought and mental health care centers around Western aesthetics and Euro-American psychology. This paper attempts to indigenize both by focusing on “bureaucratic aesthetics” in…
The Future of the South China Sea Dispute: Perspectives from the Philippines
Justice Antonio Carpio, Supreme Court of the Philippines
Co-sponsored by Perry World House.
The South China Sea and the West Philippine Sea remain geopolitically fraught locations. The People’s Republic of China has successfully militarized the region…
TBA
Elizabeth Wishnick, Senior Research Scholar, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Past Speaker Series
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.…
Freedom Undone: The Assault on Liberal Values and Institutions in Hong Kong
Michael Davis, Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
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…
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
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,…
Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China
Lynette Ong, Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto
How do states coerce citizens into compliance while simultaneously minimizing backlash? In Outsourcing…
