During the first millennium of imperial history, East Asian empires expanded into the semi-arid zones of Inner Asia and established agricultural settlements to sustain frontier garrisons. Under the tuntian system, soldier-farmers cultivated land to provision troops and livestock. A comprehensive analysis of how this agricultural system operated and its limits, accounting for environmental and climatic constraints, remains needed. This paper examines Tang military farms along the Yellow River in the empire’s northwestern borderlands, from the Northwestern Loess Plateau to the Ordos Loop. Situated at the edge of the monsoon zone, this semi-arid region was more conducive to an agropastoral economy. Previous scholarship suggests that agricultural expansion into marginal lands was facilitated by favorable regional climatic conditions. However, agricultural land remained limited. Drawing on Tang administrative records, covering population, livestock, farm distribution, crop types, and labor inputs, this study uses these data as proxies for agricultural productivity and sustainability. By integrating historical and climatic evidence, this study shows that military farming depended on sustained state intervention, particularly in land allocation, irrigation maintenance, and labor organization. More broadly, it highlights the role of institutional responses to environmental constraints in shaping state capacity.

The third session of the Chinese Citizenship Webinar Series (2026) will take place online on 30 May 2026. This session features a talk by Xiaoxin Zhong from Yunnan University, focusing on the everyday lives, social agency, and forms of belonging developed by Myanmar brides living in southwest China’s border regions. Date: 30 May 2026 Time: 13:00–14:30 BST 20:00–21:30 Beijing Time Format: Microsoft Teams Webinar Meeting ID: 373 829 413 264 332 Passcode: mg2bm7R9 Join link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/373829413264332?p=krTD4bSVGnzHFfWKW4 Speaker Xiaoxin Zhong Yunnan University Xiaoxin Zhong is Associate Professor of Ethnology in the School of Ethnology and Sociology at Yunnan University. His research focuses on Myanmar studies and border studies along the China–Myanmar border. Title Making Belonging at the Margins: Borderland Citizenship among Myanmar Brides in Southwest China Abstract This talk explores the experiences and agency of Myanmar brides living in Ruili, a Chinese border city, amid their exclusion from formal citizenship. Drawing on five months of fieldwork, it examines how these women navigate legal precarity, economic marginality, and social exclusion through everyday strategies of survival, mutual support, and digital entrepreneurship. The study frames their actions as acts of citizenship and reveals an emergent form of borderland citizenship produced through informal practices of solidarity and livelihood-making. This ethnographic account calls for a reconceptualisation of citizenship beyond legal frameworks, highlighting how marginalised migrants negotiate belonging in China’s geopolitical peripheries. Discussant Yaobin Tong Shenzhen University Yaobin Tong is Assistant Professor in Education Studies at Shenzhen University. He received his PhD from the Institute of Education, UCL. Chair Liangliang Zhang NYU Shanghai Liangliang Zhang is Assistant Professor of Global China Studies at NYU Shanghai. She received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 2022, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She also holds an MPhil in Social Anthropology, with a concentration in Medical Anthropology, from Cambridge, and a BA in International Comparative Studies from Duke University. Liangliang’s research explores the intersection of citizenship, well-being, and lived ecology in a globalising China. About the Webinar Series The Chinese Citizenship Webinar Series (2026) explores citizenship, belonging, migration, borderlands, and state–society relations in contemporary China through interdisciplinary dialogue. Institutional Support: CAPPE, University of Brighton Global China Studies, NYU Shanghai Journal Support: Citizenship Studies Social Transformations in Chinese Societies All interested colleagues and students are warmly welcome to attend. Please feel free to share this event with anyone who may be interested.

​讲座简介: 本次讲座将系统性地拆解重水墨的当代构建与国际化进程。讲座内容贯穿创作者的个人实践历程、本体方法论的理论推演，以及在全球化语境下的跨文化接受逻辑，最终落脚于人工智能时代东方视觉艺术的未来走向。 ​1. 跨界游走与寻道经历：主讲人从工科到艺术、从东方到西方，包括四川、沈阳、成都、重庆、海南、广州、深圳、香港、安徽、北京，威尼斯、米兰、东京、巴黎、多伦多、纽约、波士顿。2. 重水墨的界定与当代创新：探讨重水墨在传统与现当代艺术结合点上的位置。客观梳理其发展脉络、标志性里程碑与关键创新，结合学术层面的综合评价，明确其在当代水墨领域的艺术史坐标。3. 跨文化语境与视觉语言：分析重水墨的国际视野与跨文化适应性。在全球化语境中，重水墨致力于超越地域与文化的局限，探索更具普适性与通行性的视觉语言，以此获得更广泛的国际认同与文化接纳。4. 结构本体与方法论支撑：强调艺术本体的视觉化呈现与结构支撑。探讨如何通过实质性的演进，将佛教的空性无常与道家的寻道理念转化为新的视觉形态，并评估这种结构联通与方法论在当代艺术史中的独特意义。5. 视觉先导与审美感知：探讨长期视觉训练对审美感知的深度影响，强调直觉在审美判断中的核心作用。重水墨主张通过高度凝练的视觉形式引导观者，寻觅并建立高雅的审美共鸣。6. 身份认同与时代精神投射：剖析创作者作为当代知识分子的精神诉求。分析如何利用深沉、厚重的视觉结构来承载崇高感与时代担当，并以九贝系列等具体作品为例，探讨其中蕴含的悲剧意识与创作者的心路历程。7. 实践场域与空间尺度：分享在不同物理空间与画室的创作实践，具体分析作品的尺度与水墨材料在实际展览与操作中的张力关系。8. 国际认同与跨文化实证：基于国际展览经验、跨文化交流项目、品牌合作以及全球收藏体系，分析重水墨被不同文化背景受众接受的内在逻辑，并以卢贝尔的收藏与交流经历等具体案例作为实证。9. 时代使命与未来学派展望：提出建立新型水墨发展方向的时代紧迫感。探讨在人工智能时代视觉结构发生演变的背景下，全球化进程中东方视觉学派的建设路径与未来可能性。 ​核心理念：真正能够留下来的艺术，必须同时具备直观的视觉力量、深厚的结构深度，以及跨越文化的精神穿透力。

Please join us for our annual Taiwan Studies Program Spring Colloquium where we celebrate the end of a busy academic year with research presentations from graduating students as well as visiting scholars of the Taiwan Studies Program. RSVP at bit.ly/TSP-26 Presentation information on our website at https://jsis.washington.edu/taiwan/events.

We are pleased to invite you to a thought-provoking discussion that explores China in Africa paradigm in a comparative perspective with India. While much attention has been centered on China in Africa and Global China as a lens through which to examine changing patterns of investment and infrastructure in Africa, this panel puts the China in Africa paradigm in a comparative perspective with India, which has longstanding commercial and trade ties with East and South Africa. This online panel, co-sponsored with the Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies of The New School, will assess Indian and Chinese engagements in Africa through the lens of technology transfers, skills upgrading, educational exchanges, and knowledge flows. Participants will explore patterns of expertise and technology transfer, higher education partnerships, cross-border research collaborations, and supply chains, among other forms of engagement between Chinese and Indian organizations with African counterparts Register here.