PROFESSOR GEOFFREY JONES (HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL)
November 21, 2024 at 10:00 AM UTC
Capitalism is a remarkable system which has re-invented itself throughout history. It has proved capable of co-existing with entirely different political and economic contexts. Firms are much more fragile institutions than the capitalist system, although there are prominent examples of resilience, very occasionally for hundreds of years. Business historians have typically assumed that firm growth and survival are positives for society, while the failure of a firm is a problem which needs explaining and is bad for society. This lecture argues that historically the correlation between firm survival and societal good is not automatic. The lecture will discuss cases when corporate resilience is, in the words of the economist William Baumol, productive for society, but also unproductive and even destructive. It will consider historically firms based in both China and the Global South and developed countries.
TONGDONG BAI,PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT FUDAN UNIVERSITY
November 21, 2024 at 5:00 PM UTC
Thursday, November 21, 2024 -12:00pmto1:30pm Online event -- Zoom Click link below to register Registration required: click here to register There are four problems with democracy, especially the institution of one person one vote.These include an inherent anti-elitism; a failure to consider nonvoting stakeholders; a bias toward the interests of powerful interests; and individual voters' difficulty to judge their own interests.Many democratic thinkers understand them and try to correct them from within a framework of liberal democracy.Tongdong Bai,Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University,will argue that these revisions are fundamentally inadequate to address these fundamental problems of majoritarian democracy. A better political arrangement is a hybrid regime that contains both democratic and meritocratic elements, which is what a Confucian would propose. Professor Bai will illustrate the basic arrangements of this regime, and show why it can deal with the aforementioned problems -- and thus why it is superior to today’s democratic regimes. Event moderated byJoshua Freedman, Postdoctoral Fellow at Penn's Center for the Study of Contemporary China. Professor Bai's talk will be heavily based on chapters 2-4 of his book,Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case.The file is attached below. -- Dr. Tongdong Bai, born in Beijing, China, is the Dongfang Chair Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University, Global Professor of Law at NYU’s Law School, and adjunct professor at NYU-Shanghai. He held a bachelor degree in nuclear physics and a master degree in the philosophy of science from Peking University, and a doctoral degree in philosophy from Boston University. He was a tenured associate professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati before he moved to Fudan in 2010. In the academic year of 2016-2017, he was a Fulbright Scholar and a Berggruen Fellow at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. His research interests include political philosophy and Chinese philosophy. He has two books published in English:China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom(Zed Books, 2012), andAgainst Political Equality: The Confucian Case(Princeton University Press, 2019); he also has three books published in Chinese,A New Mission of an Old State: The Comparative and Contemporary Relevance of Classical Confucian Political Philosophy(Peking University Press, 2009),Tension of Reality: Einstein, Bohr and Pauli in the EPR Debates(Peking University Press, 2009), andTian Xia: Five Lectures on theMencius (Guangxi Shifan University Press, 2021). He is now working on the philosophy of Han Fei Zi (circa 250 BCE), a “Legalist” and a harsh critic of Confucians, as well as a real-life princeling who is often compared with Machiavelli and Hobbes. He is also the director of an English-based MA and visiting program in Chinese philosophy at Fudan University that is intended to promote the studies of Chinese philosophy in the world. These and other academic and social activities in which he is involved are all aimed to introduce new political norms that draw their inspirations from traditional Chinese philosophy and are informed by comparative philosophy and political theories.
DR LI KIN-SUM SAMMY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, ACADEMY OF CHINESE, HISTORY, RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY, HONG KONG BAPTIST UNIVERSITY
November 22, 2024 at 8:30 AM UTC
Sponsored by Simon Suen Foundation, the “Archaeology, Artifacts and Art” 2024 Lecture Series will be held from November 2024 to August 2025. The Academy will curate a series of lectures on archaeology, history, artifacts and art in collaboration with experts and scholars locally and abroad, including esteemed researchers art collectors as well as connoisseurs. With the splendor of the pantheon, we endeavor to embark on a journey of discovery with international academics and students from different backgrounds. Ephemeral Arts: Bell Chimes, Zither Tones, and Tea Whisking 2024/11/22 | 16:30–18:00 |Conducted in Putonghua Dr LI Kin-sum Sammy Department of History, Academy of Chinese, History, Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University Most artifacts and spaces relevant to the study of arts and to archaeological research have a tangible existence. But how do we examine the intangible, especially those that last only a fleeting moment? In recent years, research into the history of human senses has flourished, a history that can be considered a history of ephemeral arts. What breakthroughs can we still achieve in this area? Through tangible objects, can we focus on intangible, fleeting arts, such as studying the ephemeral acts of bronze bells ringing, qin zithers playing, and tea whisking? Can we explore the fleeting movements involved, the sound produced by bells and qin strings, and the visual, palatable, and olfactory experiences generated by them? These extremely interesting issues deserve to be addressed. **The work described in this lecture was partially supported by grants from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), People’s Republic of China (Project No. HKBU 12618422 and 22601019), and Quality Education Fund E-Learning Ancillary Facilities Programme (2021/0257). Participation Registration:https://forms.office.com/r/aG2jmg3eiN In-person Venue: Hong Kong Baptist University Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology (SWT 702, Level 7, Shaw Tower, Shaw Campus) Online: ZOOM:https://hkbu.zoom.us/j/98147765164?pwd=astx7IPvJSyuyNjD0yhTzteVdJOQ6b.1 Meeting ID: 981 4776 5164 Passwords: 572309
主讲人：易富贤。威斯康辛大学麦迪逊分校研究员，《报业辛迪加》专栏作者，率先掀起停止中国计划生育的思潮和运动。《大国空巢》从2007年的禁书到2013年新华网的“十大好书〞。博鳌亚洲论坛、路透社NEX峰会嘉宾。在北大、清华、芝加哥大学等地演讲上百场。接受上百家媒体采访。报告入选《改革40年：经济学文选》。 评议人：梁中堂。退休前为上海社科院研究员。从1979年开始反对“一胎化”生育政策，是1985年至2015年山西省翼城县“允许农民生育二孩实验”的主持者。近年从事计划生育史研究，著有《“一胎化”生育政策产生的时代背景研究》《回首西州路，兼评中国现代人口学霸权主义》《陈慕华主管计划生育，兼评中国现代人口学浪漫主义》等。 主持人：王勋。美国威斯康辛大学帕克塞分校社会学系教授、原系主任。该校中国研究所创始和现任所长。曾任教育部”长江学者” 评委、清华大学、南开大学、武汉大学和中国人民大学等大学访问学者和客座教授。主要研究领域为组织社会学和社会变迁。著有《全球社会学》《纵横当代科学前沿：社会科学与行为科学》等著作。
November 24, 2024 at 1:30 AM UTC
中国独生子女、以及二孩、三孩政策的预测基础都值得商榷。根据高估的人口，有中国经济学家预测中国经济将会是美国的2到3倍，引发美国的战略焦虑；其实主讲者研究表明2030-35年中国所有人口参数都将比美国差。独生子女政策减少家庭规模和刚需，导致居民可支配收入、消费占GDP比例从1983年的62%、53%降至2023年的44%、38%，引发内需不足，经济和就业高度依赖顺差，其中四分之三来自美国。居民可支配收入降低导致＂强政府、弱家庭＂，与美国的意识形态差距扩大。主讲者认为这些是两国关系恶化和美国制造业衰落以致于铁锈区的选民在2016年、2024年将特朗普推上总统宝座的原因之一。搜索“大学沙龙”YouTube 频道收看讲座。
LIZA LIM, PROFESSOR, THE SYDNEY CONSERVATORIUM OF MUSIC. BETH YAHP, SENIOR LECTURER IN CREATIVE WRITING, USYD.
November 29, 2024 at 1:00 AM UTC
Talks in Chinese Humanities Composer Liza Lim and librettist Beth Yahp describe their operaYuè Ling Jié(Moon Spirit Feasting), commissioned by and premiered at the 2000 Adelaide International Festival of the Arts, as a ‘Chinese ritual street opera’. The work is based on Lim and Yahp’s research in 1999 into street performances surrounding the ‘Hungry Ghost Festival’ in Penang, Malaysia. There, Chinese communities address and feed the ghosts that have been released from the underworld during the 7th lunar month of the Chinese calendar using street shrines of offerings and entertainments to appease unpredictable forces and renew social bonds. Lim and Yahp bring these ritual structures into a confrontation with the stories of an adjacent festival celebrating Chang-O, the moon goddess (Autumn Moon Festival), focussing on questions of subjecthood and more-than-human voicing to explode notions of ‘Chineseness’. The opera moves through polyasporic spaces wherein Penang street culture is re-imagined and literally transported to Australia, to Europe, Japan and back to Australia. Lim and Yahp will discuss aspects of the ‘polyasporic’ experience – travelling cultures and memory, ghostly autotopography, for example – in relation to the composition of the music and libretto as well as the work’s reception across the opera’s 6 seasons of performances (2000-2006). About the speakers Liza Lim, Professor, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She is an Australian composer, educator and researcher whose music focusses on collaborative and transcultural practices. Her works, and in particular four operas:The Oresteia(1993),Moon Spirit Feasting(2000),The Navigator(2007) andTree of Codes(2016) explore themes around ritual, temporal slippage and the uncanny. Extensively commissioned by some of the world’s pre-eminent orchestras and ensembles, Professor Lim is Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She was recently awarded an ARC Laureate Fellowship for the project 'Music and Multispecies Creativity' (2025-2029). Beth Yahp, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, USYD. Originally from Malaysia, Beth Yahp is an award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction, whose work has been published in Australia and internationally. Her novelThe Crocodile Furywas translated into several languages and her libretto,Moon Spirit Feasting, for composer Liza Lim, won the APRA Award for Best Classical Composition in 2003. Other publications include the collection of short stories,The Red PearlandOther Storiesand her travel memoirEat First, Talk Later, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Adelaide Festival Award for Literature (Non-Fiction). She is currently working on a book ofSmall Pleasuresfor precarious times. "Talks in Chinese Humanities"is co-presented by the China Studies Centre, the Discipline of Chinese Studies and the Australian Society for Asian Humanities at the University of Sydney and the UNSW Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture's Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art. Image credit:Yuè Ling Jié(Moon Spirit Feasting), ELISION Ensemble: Melissa Madden Gray, Oren Tanabe, Deborah Kayser, with Yan Jiemin; Hebbel Theater Berlin 2002, photo: Gerhard Ludwig
DR. DENIS SIMON
December 2, 2024 at 5:00 PM UTC
Abstract: Cooperation in higher education has been one of the bedrock elements in U.S.–China relations for over four decades. The mobility of students and scholars as well as faculty and administrators in both directions has helped to support the internationalization goals of universities on both sides of the Pacific. Collaborative research also has been a key component of U.S.–China cooperation as both countries have secured benefits from working together on pushing out the frontiers of science and technology. Unfortunately, with the souring of political relations between Beijing and Washington DC, the education relationship has come under closer scrutiny. Some groups in the US Congress would even like to reduce the numbers of PRC students and scholars coming to the U.S. and to prevent Chinese students from studying in emerging fields such as AI, advanced computing, and even life sciences. The numbers of U.S. students interested in studying in China has declined in a significant way. Students and their parents appear to be concerned about diminishing career opportunities in China as well as limits on internet access. To address and arrest some of these worrisome trends on both sides of the Pacific, the Institute for International Education (IIE) on the U.S. side and China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE) on the Chinese side agreed to organize a bilateral “dialogue” to address present and future problems and issues. The first meeting was held in September 2023 in New York; the second meeting was held in Beijing in October 2024. During this webinar, Dr. Denis Simon, a key participant in organizing both dialogue meetings, will discuss the origins of the dialogue, the nature of the issues discussed, and the work plan devised to ameliorate several of the key on-going issues. About the speaker: Denis Simon has been deeply involved in the bilateral relationship in education and S&T affairs for over four decades. From 2015-2020, he served as the Executive Vice Chancellor of Duke Kunshan University. Prior to coming to Duke, he was the Senior Adviser for China Affairs at Arizona State University. Dr. Simon received his MA in Asian studies and PhD in political science from UC Berkeley and his BA in Asian studies from SUNY New Paltz. In 2006, he received the China National Friendship Award from Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing.
JIN ZHU, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT DEPARTMENT OF REAL ESTATE AND CONSTRUCTION AND DEPARTMENT OF URBAN PLANNING AND DESIGN, THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG.
December 3, 2024 at 1:30 AM UTC
Sydney China Seminars Home-making Strategies of Homeless People in Post-repatriation Urban China While Chinese people are technically guaranteed a place to live through the hukou system, homelessness is still an issue in China. Our paper aims to explore the home-making strategies of homeless people in the context of China’s homelessness policy transition from repatriation to assistance in the post-socialist era, using in-depth interviews with homeless people and others interacting with them in Shanghai’s high-prestige downtown area. Drawing on structuration theory, we find that homeless people work to create a sense of home through: 1) avoiding the government service centres where freedom, privacy and social contact are restricted; 2) adapting their routines to rigid place management in the daytime and benefitting from strict security at night; and 3) tactically utilising surrounding spaces and facilities to carry out daily activities and develop a sense of home and control. Government assistance through the service centres is inadequate and may even be diametrically opposed to home-making, highlighting room for improvement in government homelessness policies. About the speaker Jin Zhu, Assistant Professor at Department of Real Estate and Construction and Department of Urban Planning and Design, The University of Hong Kong. Previously, he worked as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong. He completed his PhD at City Futures Research Centre, University of New South Wales (UNSW) and received his bachelors and masters degree in planning from Zhejiang and Tongji Universities, China. His research interests span housing studies, urbanisation and migration, rural studies, and urban planning and governance.
DR SOPHIA HUEI-LING CHEN, POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER AT ACADEMIA SINICA (TAIPEI).
December 12, 2024 at 1:00 AM UTC
Talks in Chinese Humanities Before They Graduate: Divining Same-sex Schoolgirl Love from Women Writings Do women love beyond marriage? Are they capable of loving each other? If Sedgwick has proposed a homosocial world amid the privileged men inBetween Men(1985), what can be said about the privileged women–those who received the first wave of modern education in Republican China and the colonial Taiwan as well as those who became expatriate students in the US during the scourge of Cultural Revolution. In this talk, I locate four texts from the last century: “Lishi’s Diary” (1923) by Lu Yin and “There is such a thing” (1928) by Ling Shuhua in the May-Fourth literary period, “Flower Blooming Season” (1942) by Yang Qianhe in the colonial Taiwan, and "Our old classmates are doing well” by Eileen Chang in the US during the rise of Hippie culture and anti-Vietnam-War movement. What threads through these historically disparate and geographically diverse texts are the narratives of female friendship in seemingly all-girl schools. Youthful, uninitiated and bound by the campus life, these schoolgirls seem to only have one another and seem to be exclusively drawn to one another. The verb “divine” in the title of the paper suggests a strong sense of ineffability to these girls’ mutual sentiments. This talk will provide a contour for such sentiments, further arguing that they should be treated as precursors to queer texts that emerged after the 1990s that began to bear clear marks oftongzhiidentities. About the speaker Dr Sophia Huei-Ling Chen, postdoctoral researcher at Academia Sinica (Taipei). Her research focuses ontongzhiand queer literary narratives from the Sinosphere. "Talks in Chinese Humanities"is co-presented by theChina Studies Centre, theDiscipline of Chinese Studiesand theAustralian Society for Asian Humanitiesat the University of Sydney and theUNSW Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture'sJudith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art. The picture is AI generated.
CONFERENCE AGENDA: INTRODUCTION HONG NONG (EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR CHINA-AMERICA STUDIES) OPENING REMARKS WU SHICUN (CHAIRMAN OF THE ADVISORY BOARD, INSTITUTE FOR CHINA-AMERICA STUDIES) KEYNOTE QIU WENXING(MINISTER,EMBASSY OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA IN THE UNITED STATES MODERATOR -GORDON HOULDEN (DIRECTOR EMERITUS, THE CHINA INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA) PANEL I: GEOPOLITICS & SECURITY MICHAEL SWAINE (SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, EAST ASIA PROGRAM, QUINCY INSTITUTE FOR RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT) DIAO DAMING (PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, RENMIN UNIVERSITY OF CHINA; SENIOR FELLOW, BEIJING CLUB FOR INTERNATIONAL DIALOGUE) ROBERT DALY (DIRECTOR, KISSINGER INSTITUTE ON CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES, WILSON CENTER) ZHAO HAI (RESEARCH FELLOW, INSTITUTE OF WORLD ECONOMICS AND POLITICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES; SENIOR FELLOW, BEIJING CLUB FOR INTERNATIONAL DIALOGUE) MODERATOR -LIU YAWEI (SENIOR ADVISOR ON CHINA, THE CARTER CENTER) PANEL II:SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY PAUL TRIOLO (PARTNER FOR CHINA ANDTECHNOLOGY POLICY LEAD,ALBRIGHT STONEBRIDGE GROUP) CAO CONG (PROFESSOR IN INNOVATION STUDIES, DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT, UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM) DENIS SIMON (DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, INSTITUTE FOR CHINA-AMERICA STUDIES) LU XIAOMENG (DIRECTOR, GEO-TECHNOLOGY, EURASIA GROUP) MODERATOR- SOURABH GUPTA (SENIOR FELLOW & HEAD, TRADE ‘N TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM, INSTITUTE FOR CHINA-AMERICA STUDIES) LUNCHEON SPEECH [FREE LUNCH PROVIDED FOR REGISTERED IN-PERSON ATTENDEES] STEPHEN ORLINS (PRESIDENT, NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS) MODERATOR -AMY CELICO (PARTNER, ALBRIGHT STONEBRIDGE GROUP) PANEL III: THIRD PARTIES' VIEWS ON U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS SATU LIMAYE (VICE-PRESIDENT, EAST-WEST CENTER) ENRIQUE DUSSEL PETERS (PROFESSOR, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTÓNOMA DE MÉXICO) JAN WILLEM BLANKERT (SENIOR FELLOW, EU-ASIA CENTRE) RACHEL MINYOUNG LEE (SENIOR FELLOW, KOREA PROGRAM & 38 NORTH, STIMSON CENTER) MODERATOR- YANG LI (EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR CHINA-EUROPE STUDIES) PANEL IV: PEOPLE-TO-PEOPLE EXCHANGES MADELYN ROSS (PRESIDENT EMERITUS, US-CHINA EDUCATION TRUST) HAN HUA (GENERAL SECRETARY, BEIJING CLUB FOR INTERNATIONAL DIALOGUE) JAN BERRIS (VICE-PRESIDENT, NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS) WANG SHENG (PRESIDENT, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR SOUTH CHINA SEA STUDIES) MODERATOR- ERIC RICHARDSON (FOUNDING PRESIDENT, INHR; CHINA COORDINATOR, PAX SAPIENS) CLOSING REMARKS HONG NONG (EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR CHINA-AMERICA STUDIES)
December 12, 2024 at 2:00 PM UTC
Trump 2.0: Will U.S.-China Relations Prosper, Suffer or Muddle Through? On January 20, 2025, the United States of America’s 45th president will also become its 47th president. As its 45th president, Donald Trump had declared China to be a revisionist power that was engaged in long term strategic competition with the United States in his administration’s National Security Strategy of December 2017. Over the next three years, he imposed hard-hitting Section 301 tariffs on China, technology denials and sanctions on firms ranging from Huawei to TikTok, and launched a controversial ‘China Initiative’ to root out perceived economic espionage and intellectual property theft by Beijing. Political, economic and people-to-people ties suffered during this period of disruption, and which was turbocharged following the spread of the COVID-19 virus to America’s shores in March 2020. All along during his time in office though, Mr. Trump maintained a cordial relationship with President Xi Jinping. With his dealmaking instincts and unconventional diplomatic style, a ‘Phase One’ trade agreement was signed with Beijing and a leader-to-leader channel of peacemaking opened on the Korean Peninsula. As he returns to the Oval Office as America’s 47th president, Donald Trump has threatened to impose even higher tariffs on China. His disruptive approach to politics and policy, furthermore, threaten to destabilize the Biden-Xi consensus that was forged at the Bali G20 Summit in November 2022 and consolidated a year later at the Leaders Meeting in Woodside, California. Will the ‘San Francisco Vision’ that Biden and Xi forged be relegated now to the dustbin of history? Can the two sides candidly coexist over the next four years and embed their ‘new normal’ era of strategic competition within a durable strategic framework? Or is intense bilateral strategic rivalry inevitable? Will the decoupling in trade and technology ties become irreversible? Or is there an opportunity for Chinese inbound investment to stimulate the creation of good manufacturing jobs in Trump’s Middle America in the industries of the future, such as electric vehicles and battery storage systems? Can the two sides continue to manage their differences over the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula as well as the interpretive gap between their respective One China Policy and One China Principle? Or will Taiwan become the critical node in the U.S.’ major power rivalry with — and containment of — China? How have the U.S.’ allies, partners, neutrals and adversaries in the Indo-Pacific region reacted to Trump’s return to the White House? What are their choices, expectations and anxieties? And will people-to-people ties — scientific, academic, cultural and recreational — serve as a ballast to the bilateral relationship? Or will racially coded attacks and mutual suspicion accentuate polarization between these two great countries and societies?