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.
Past Speaker Series
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…
Anti-Discrimination Law and Social Activism in China: Gender in Employment and Other Issues
Xiaonan Liu, Professor of Law, Institute for Human Rights, China University of Political Science and Law; Yizhi Huang, Attorney, Beijing Yirenping Center
China’s laws and international treaties that China has joined prohibit or limit discrimination in employment on the basis of gender, ethnicity, disability, rural residency, or having an infectious disease. Victims…
Rotating to the Top: How Elites and Commoners Rise in the Chinese Communist Party
Yiqing Xu, Assistant Professor of Political Science, UCSD
This research investigates the career trajectory patterns of Central Committee members of the Chinese Communist Party in the reform era, including descendants of prominent party senior officials (elites) and those…