UCLA sociologist Ching Kwan Lee discusses her new book that is the culmination of over six years of ethnographic research in Zambia on Chinese capital and labor.  In The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa, Prof. Lee analyzes the peculiarity of outbound Chinese state capital by comparing it with global private capital in copper and construction in Zambia. Refuting the rhetorical narratives of “Chinese colonialism” and “south-south cooperation,” Prof. Lee chronicles the multi-faceted struggles that confront and differentiate these two varieties of capital, and discuss their uneven potentials for post-colonial African development, China's Belt-and-Road Initiative, and telling a more nuanced story about Global China.

The Specter of Global China - Ching Kwan Lee

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In this episode, UC San Diego Professor Barry Naughton talks globalization and economic development in China, Russia and India with Temple Professor Roselyn Hsueh.

The Micro-Foundations of Capitalism

21CCC Assistant Director Harris Doshay sits down with Syracuse Associate Professor and UCSD Alum Dimitar Gueorguiev to discuss his latest book, Retrofitting Leninism.  In it, they explore the logic of popular participation in authoritarian regimes and the ongoing struggles faced by the CCP.

Retrofitting Lenism - Dimitar Gueorguiev and Harris Doshay

Susan Shirk, Chair of the 21st Century China Center, and former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam sit down to discuss the ways the China Initiative, from flaws in its inception to views towards the future of DOJ espionage prosecutions.

The DOJ's China Initiative: Where it went wrong, and why - Susan Shirk and Carol Lam

Micah Muscolino interviews James Millward, a leading scholar on China and Central Asia at Georgetown University. They connect the history of Xinjiang in the Qing Empire, to assimilationist policies and terrorism of the 2000s, and to present day large-scale repression and cultural genocide of Uighurs under Xi Jinping.

This episode is adapted from the China Throughlines web series, which features UC San Diego’s China historians in conversation with their colleagues on the echos and connectedness of China’s storied past to the twenty-first century. 

James A. Millward is Professor of Inter-societal History at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, teaching Chinese, Central Asian and world history. He also teaches as invited professor in the Máster Oficial en Estudios de Asia Oriental at the University of Granada, Spain. His specialties include Qing empire; the silk road; Eurasian lutes and music in history; and historical and contemporary Xinjiang. He follows and comments on current issues regarding the Uyghurs and PRC ethnicity policy. His publications include The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (2013), Eurasian Crossroads: a History of Xinjiang (2007), New Qing Imperial History: the Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde (2004), and Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity and Empire in Qing Central Asia (1998).

Micah Muscolino is Professor and Paul G. Pickowicz Endowed Chair in Modern Chinese History at UC San Diego. His research focuses on the environmental history of modern China. His first book, Fishing Wars and Environmental Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (2009), explored the environmental history of China’s most important marine fishery/ His second book The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond, 1938-1950 (2015) engaged with the historiography of war and militarization in modern China and the interdisciplinary scholarship on war and the environment in world history. He received his B.A. from UC Berkeley (1999) and Ph.D. from Harvard University (2006). 

Web series host: Micah Muscolino, UC San Diego Editor: Samuel Tsoi, UC San Diego  Music: Dave Liang/Shanghai Restoration Project

Xinjiang from Qing to Xi - James Millward & Micah Muscolino

Micah Muscolino interviews Mary Brazelton, a historian of science, technology and medicine, on mass mobilizations to battle epidemics, medical diplomacy, and vaccines as tools of political control before and after 1949. They discuss the implications of those historical developments on how China and Taiwan managed Covid-19, the current usage of data collection and surveillance in the name of public health, the resistance against compulsory vaccinations, and how the PRC and ROC influence global health policy.

The Specter of Global China - Ching Kwan Lee

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