Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

By Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

What's Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies about?

The Fairbank Center is a world-leading center on China at Harvard University. Listen to interviews on our "Harvard on China" podcast, recordings from our public events, and audio from our archives.

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Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies episodes:

05.17.2022
How Will the War in Ukraine Impact China’s Engagement in Eastern Europe?
Over the past three decades, China has become a major trade partner and investor for Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine. The region is also an important component of the BRI New Eurasian Land Bridge, providing alternative access to Western Europe. Russia’s...
01.24.2022
The Political Economy of Chinese Finance in the Americas, with Stephen Kaplan
Speaker: Stephen Kaplan, Associate Professor of Political Science and Economic Affairs, George Washington University Discussant: Laura Alfaro, Warren Alpert Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School This book explores how China’s state-led capitalism affects national level governance. China, as the world’s largest...
01.24.2022
Forecasting Personnel Changes at the 20th Party Congress, with Cheng Li
Speaker: Cheng Li, Director, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution Moderator/Discussant: Elizabeth J. Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government and Director of the opens in a new windowHarvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University Cheng Li is the director of the John L. Thornton...
01.24.2022
Greening East Asia: The Rise of the Eco-Development State
Speakers: Ashley Esarey, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Alberta Joanna Lewis, Distinguished Associate Professor of Energy and Environment and Director of the Science, Technology and International Affairs Program (STIA),Georgetown University Mary Alice Haddad, John E. Andrus Professor of Government, Chair...
01.21.2022
Governing the Urban in China and India, with Xuefei Ren
Speaker: Xuefei Ren, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Michigan State University Xuefei Ren is a comparative urbanist whose work focuses on urban development, governance, architecture, and the built environment in global perspective.She is the author of three award-winning books: Governing the...
01.21.2022
Competition, Coexistence, and the Future of US-China Relations, with Evan Medeiros
Speaker: Evan Medeiros, Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies and the Cling Family Senior Fellow in US-China Relations, Georgetown University Evan S. Medeiros is a professor and Penner family chair in Asia studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown...
01.16.2022
The Ideograph and a Cantonese Pun, with Eugenia Lean
Speaker: Eugenia Lean, Professor of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures; Director, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University By examining two early legal cases featuring the alleged counterfeiting of Xiangmao Honey Soap, this talk shows how the Chinese language and...
01.11.2022
Shaping China’s Narratives: How Journalists Report on China in the World
China is constantly in the global media limelight due to its growing presence and influence throughout the world. Journalists reporting on this rising superpower play a crucial role in explaining the complexities of its domestic developments and international activities to...
01.07.2022
China's Mundane Revolution, with Joan Judge
Speaker: Joan Judge, Professor, Department of History, York University What can we learn from intellectual detritus? Focusing on cheap print, vernacular daily-use knowledge, and common readers in the Long Republic (1895-1955), this talk argues that the books an age discards as...
01.07.2022
Early Childhood Development in Rural China, with Scott Rozelle
Speaker: Scott Rozelle, Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of the Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, Stanford University Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions...
01.07.2022
Literature and Censorship in China since 1979, with Michel Hockx
Speaker: Michel Hockx, Professor of Chinese Literature, University of Notre Dame On July 30, 1979, Deng Xiaoping addressed the fourth national conference of Chinese writers and artists. Towards the end of his speech he stated, to collective sighs of relief, that...
01.07.2022
China-funded Education Programs in US Schools, with Naima Green-Riley
Speaker: Naima Green-Riley, Ph.D. Candidate and Raymond Vernon Fellow, Department of Government, Harvard University; Former Consular Officer, US. Consulate General, Guangzhou, China This event is part of our Critical Issues Confronting China public lecture series.
11.16.2021
Connecting the World-Island | What Will China’s PEACE Cable Bring To Pakistan And East Africa?
China’s Hengtong Group—leading a consortium of telecom companies from Hong Kong, Pakistan, and East Africa—will soon complete installation of the Pakistan East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) cable. Spanning the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, this cable will connect the...
11.10.2021
The Stone and the Wireless, with Ma Shaoling
The Stone and the Wireless: Lyrical Media and Bad Models of the Feeling Women Ma Shaoling is an Assistant Professor of Humanities (Literature) at Yale-NUS College. She was born in Taiwan, grew up in Singapore, and spent ten years in the...
11.10.2021
From Poverty Eradication to Common Prosperity, with Bill Bikales
Speaker: Bill Bikales, Principal and Lead Economist, Kunlun Associates Bill is a Harvard-trained economist and Asia specialist and has worked at the most senior level of government in Mongolia on comprehensive fiscal reform and restructuring insolvent bank and power sectors, and...
11.10.2021
Pandemics and Politics in Mao's China, with Fang Xiaoping
Speaker: Fang Xiaoping, Assistant Professor of History, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. During the 1961-1965 period, a cholera pandemic ravaged the southeastern coastal areas of Mao’s China which was already suffering from lingering starvation, class struggles, political campaigns and...
11.09.2021
Evolutionary Governance under Authoritarianism, with Kellee Tsai
Speaker: Kellee Tsai, Dean of Humanities and Social Science and Chair Professor of Social Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology The structural transformation of China over the past several decades has given rise to a fundamental tension between...
10.15.2021
How Great is the Risk of War over Taiwan? With Bonnie Glaser
There is an intense debate among experts over the likelihood of a near-term Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Senior US military officers have warned that a PRC military action could take place in the next six years. Such dire predictions are...
10.15.2021
What does US Business really want from China? With Jeffrey Lehman
Speaker: Jeffrey Lehman, Vice Chancellor and Professor of Law, NYU Shanghai Jeffrey Lehman is the Vice Chancellor of NYU Shanghai, where he oversees all academic and administrative operations. Lehman is an internationally acclaimed leader in higher education, having served as dean...
10.15.2021
Economic Sovereignty in Contemporary China, with Pang Laikwan
Speaker: Pang Laikwan, Professor of Cultural Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong This paper focuses on the wide popularity of the meme and buzzword jiucai, garlic chives, on China’s internet to investigate the cultural and political subjectivity of the ordinary Chinese...
10.15.2021
How China Escaped Shock Therapy, with Isabella Weber
Speaker: Isabella Weber, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country’s rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the...
10.15.2021
The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History, with Ruth Mostern
Speaker: Ruth Mostern, University of Pittsburgh This talk showcases Ruth Mostern’s new book: The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History (Yale University Press, 2021). The Yellow River explains how environmentally transformative human activity has shaped the whole watershed and...
10.15.2021
Disaggregating China Inc., with Yeling Tan
Speaker: Yeiling Tan, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Oregon Professor Yeling Tan discusses her book, Disaggregating China, Inc: State Strategies in the Liberal Economic Order. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 represented an historic...
10.15.2021
Transnational Aging in the Chinese Diaspora
Panel Participants: Sara L. Friedman, Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies, Indiana University Russell King, Professor of Geography, University of Sussex Sarah Lamb, Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanistic Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology, Brandeis University Andrea Louie, Professor of Anthropology, Michigan State University Nicole...
09.24.2021
The Future is Now: On Newborn Socialist Things, with Laurence Coderre
Speaker: Laurence Coderre, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies, New York University Whereas the contemporary era in China is often depicted in terms of rampant, ideologically vacuous commodification, the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) is typically cast as a time of ubiquitous politics...
09.24.2021
Timber and Forestry in Qing China, with Zhang Meng
Speaker: Zhang Meng, Assistant Professor of History, Vanderbilt University Part of the Environment in Asia lecture series In the Qing period, China’s population tripled, and the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for timber. Standard environmental histories have often depicted this...
09.17.2021
Reassessing June Fourth, with Jeremy Brown and Louisa Lim
How significant were the events of June 1989 in the broader span of recent Chinese history? How does the aftermath of the Beijing massacre help to explain events since then, including what is happening in Hong Kong today? ...
09.10.2021
China's Leaders from Mao to Now, with David Shambaugh
Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, five men have principally shaped the ruling Chinese Communist Party and the nation: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. David Shambaugh analyzes the personal...
09.05.2021
The State of Taiwan Studies: A Roundtable Discussion on Methods and Directions
Panelists Jaw-Nian Huang, Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Development Studies, National Chengchi University, Taiwan Lawrence Zi-Qiao Yang, Assistant Professor, Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan Kevin Wei Luo, Doctoral Fellow, Hou Family fellow in Taiwan...
05.25.2021
Popularizing Law in China, with Jennifer Altehenger
How did the People's Republic of China popularize basic legal knowledge after its founding in 1949? Jennifer Altehenger, Jessica Rawson Fellow in Modern Asian History and Associate Professor of Chinese History at the University of Oxford, explains how China's party-state...
05.18.2021
How China Loses: The Pushback Against Chinese Global Ambitions, with Luke Patey
Speaker: Luke Patey, Senior Researcher, Danish Institute for International Studies At a time when many are fixated on US-China strategic competition, how will China’s relations with the rest of the world shape its future power? From its Belt and Road Initiative...
05.18.2021
China and America: Is Peaceful Competition Possible?, with Wang Jisi
Speaker: Wang Jisi, Professor in the School of International Studies and president of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University Wang Jisi is a professor in the School of International Studies and president of the Institute of International and...
04.27.2021
Rural Revitalization: China's "Ace" in Dealing with Western "Competition," with Xiaotong Feng
Speaker: Xiaotong Feng, Ph.D. Candidate, Communication University of China; Fairbank Center Visiting Scholar Discussant/Moderator: Michael Szonyi, Frank Wen-Hsiung Wu Memorial Professor of Chinese History; Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University In the past few years, even the most optimistic scholars...
04.27.2021
A World Safe for Autocracy, with Jessica Chen Weiss
Speaker: Jessica Chen Weiss, Associate Professor of Government, Cornell University How does China’s domestic governance shape its foreign policy? What role do nationalism and ideology play in Beijing’s regional and global ambitions? The Chinese leadership has been at once a revisionist,...
04.26.2021
China's Hukou System, with Martin K. Whyte
Speaker: Martin K. Whyte, John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and Sociology, Emeritus, and former director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University As the People’s Republic of China has pursued economic development over the decades, a central dilemma...
04.26.2021
Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism, with Angela Zhang
Speaker: Angela Zhang, Director of the Center for Chinese Law and Associate Professor, The University of Hong Kong In this webinar, Angela Zhang will discuss her new book Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism: How the Rise of China Challenges Global Regulation (Oxford University...
04.15.2021
Leveraging Liminality: Shenzhen and the Origins of China's Reform and Opening, with Taomo Zhou
Speaker: Taomo Zhou, Assistant Professor of History, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Immediately north of Hong Kong, Shenzhen is China’s most successful Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Commonly known as the “social laboratory” of reform and opening, Shenzhen was the foremost frontier for...
04.15.2021
China's Role in Global Finance, with Eswar Prasad
Speaker: Eswar Prasad, Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy, Cornell University; Senior Fellow and New Century Chair in International Economics, Brookings Institution; Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research. This lecture will discuss China’s economic prospects, policies, and reforms, and their...
04.15.2021
China's Economy Faces Domestic and External Challenges, with David Dollar
Speaker: David Dollar, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Global Economy and Development, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution China has gotten COVID-19 under control and is poised to bounce back strongly with 8% growth in 2021. But in the medium...
04.15.2021
Special Deals from Special Investors, with Chang-Tai Hsieh
Speaker: Chang-Tai Hsieh, Phyllis and Irwin Winkelried Professor of Economics and PCL Faculty Scholar, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business We use administrative registration records with information on the owners of all Chinese firms to document the importance of...
04.15.2021
China's Approach to National Security Under Xi Jinping, with Sheena Greitens
Speaker: Sheena Greitens, Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs Sheena Chestnut Greitens is an associate professor at the LBJ School, as well as a faculty fellow with the Clements Center for National Security...
04.02.2021
China's Military Strategy in the New Era, with M. Taylor Fravel
Speaker: M. Taylor Fravel, Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Moderator: Andrew S. Erickson, Professor of Strategy, U.S. Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute M. Taylor Fravel is the...
04.02.2021
Presenting the Panda, with E. Elena Songster
Speaker: E. Elena Songster, Professor of History, History Department, Saint Mary’s College of California The giant panda stumbled into ambassador work. Profoundly successful, its diplomatic roles multiplied and evolved, but its persistent existence as an animal repeatedly reframed its role as...
04.01.2021
Magic Weapons, with Anne-Marie Brady
Speaker: Anne-Marie Brady, Professor, University of Canterbury, New Zealand Professor Brady is a specialist of Chinese politics (domestic politics and foreign policy), polar politics, Pacific politics, and New Zealand foreign policy. She is a fluent Mandarin Chinese speaker. She is founding...
04.01.2021
The Political Genesis of Local Government Debt in China, with Jean Oi
Speaker: Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics, Department of Political Science; Director, Stanford China Program, Stanford University China’s rapidly growing local government debt (LGD) is now branded a “grey rhino,” a known threat that has received little attention. ...
04.01.2021
Social Policy and Decentralization in China, with Kerry Ratigan
Speaker: Kerry Ratigan, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Amherst College China is widely known for its strong central government, but the center needs the provinces to implement policies using their knowledge of local conditions. However, provincial priorities sometimes conflict with those...
03.29.2021
Northern Europe's Response to China's Belt and Road Initiative
Speakers: Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova, Head, China Studies Centre, Riga Stradins University; Head, New Silk Road Program, Latvian Institute of International Affairs Björn Jerdén, Director, Knowledge Centre on China , Swedish Institute of International Affairs Luke Patey, Senior Researcher, Foreign Policy and Diplomacy, Danish...
03.29.2021
A Sense of Purpose? 2021 Annual Reischauer Lecture with Rana Mitter, Part 3
Some states have always maintained a sense that they have a mission in the world well beyond the maintenance of domestic order, the United States, France and Britain among them. Japan, China and the Koreas also inherited a strong sense...
03.25.2021
An Era of Emotion? 2021 Annual Reischauer Lecture with Rana Mitter, Part 2
Speaker: Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China, St. Cross College, University of Oxford Discussant: Jie Li, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University LECTURE 2 OF 3: AN ERA OF EMOTION? One factor that defines...
03.23.2021
How New is the New Era? 2021 Annual Reischauer Lecture with Rana Mitter, Part 1
Speaker: Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China, St. Cross College, University of Oxford Discussant: Odd Arne Westad, Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs, Yale University LECTURE 1 OF 3: HOW NEW IS THE NEW ERA? China’s leaders...

What's Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies episodes:

How Will the War in Ukraine Impact China’s Engagement in Eastern Europe?

The Political Economy of Chinese Finance in the Americas, with Stephen Kaplan

Forecasting Personnel Changes at the 20th Party Congress, with Cheng Li

Greening East Asia: The Rise of the Eco-Development State

Governing the Urban in China and India, with Xuefei Ren

Competition, Coexistence, and the Future of US-China Relations, with Evan Medeiros

The Ideograph and a Cantonese Pun, with Eugenia Lean

Shaping China’s Narratives: How Journalists Report on China in the World

China's Mundane Revolution, with Joan Judge

Early Childhood Development in Rural China, with Scott Rozelle

Literature and Censorship in China since 1979, with Michel Hockx

China-funded Education Programs in US Schools, with Naima Green-Riley

Connecting the World-Island | What Will China’s PEACE Cable Bring To Pakistan And East Africa?

The Stone and the Wireless, with Ma Shaoling

From Poverty Eradication to Common Prosperity, with Bill Bikales

Pandemics and Politics in Mao's China, with Fang Xiaoping

Evolutionary Governance under Authoritarianism, with Kellee Tsai

How Great is the Risk of War over Taiwan? With Bonnie Glaser

What does US Business really want from China? With Jeffrey Lehman

Economic Sovereignty in Contemporary China, with Pang Laikwan

How China Escaped Shock Therapy, with Isabella Weber

The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History, with Ruth Mostern

Disaggregating China Inc., with Yeling Tan

Transnational Aging in the Chinese Diaspora

The Future is Now: On Newborn Socialist Things, with Laurence Coderre

Timber and Forestry in Qing China, with Zhang Meng

Reassessing June Fourth, with Jeremy Brown and Louisa Lim

China's Leaders from Mao to Now, with David Shambaugh

The State of Taiwan Studies: A Roundtable Discussion on Methods and Directions

Popularizing Law in China, with Jennifer Altehenger

How China Loses: The Pushback Against Chinese Global Ambitions, with Luke Patey

China and America: Is Peaceful Competition Possible?, with Wang Jisi

Rural Revitalization: China's "Ace" in Dealing with Western "Competition," with Xiaotong Feng

A World Safe for Autocracy, with Jessica Chen Weiss

China's Hukou System, with Martin K. Whyte

Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism, with Angela Zhang

Leveraging Liminality: Shenzhen and the Origins of China's Reform and Opening, with Taomo Zhou

China's Role in Global Finance, with Eswar Prasad

China's Economy Faces Domestic and External Challenges, with David Dollar

Special Deals from Special Investors, with Chang-Tai Hsieh

China's Approach to National Security Under Xi Jinping, with Sheena Greitens

China's Military Strategy in the New Era, with M. Taylor Fravel

Presenting the Panda, with E. Elena Songster

Magic Weapons, with Anne-Marie Brady

The Political Genesis of Local Government Debt in China, with Jean Oi

Social Policy and Decentralization in China, with Kerry Ratigan

Northern Europe's Response to China's Belt and Road Initiative

A Sense of Purpose? 2021 Annual Reischauer Lecture with Rana Mitter, Part 3

An Era of Emotion? 2021 Annual Reischauer Lecture with Rana Mitter, Part 2

How New is the New Era? 2021 Annual Reischauer Lecture with Rana Mitter, Part 1