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Begin New Search Political Geography China Content Type Video Publication Year within 3 Years Publication Year within 5 Years Publication Year within 25 Years

1. China’s Role in the Middle East

Author:
John Calabrese and Yun Sun
Publication Date:
02-2024
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
The Middle East Institute (MEI) hosted an on-the-record briefing to discuss China’s role in the Middle East amid rising regional tensions and growing threats to both international security and the global economy.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, International Security, and Economy
Political Geography:
China, Middle East, and Asia

2. Decoupling: Gender Injustice in China’s Divorce Courts

Author:
Ethan Michelson and Yao Lu
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Using 'big data' computational techniques to scrutinize cases covering 2009–2016 from all 252 basic-level courts in two Chinese provinces, Henan and Zhejiang, Ethan Michelson reveals that women have borne the brunt of a dramatic intensification since the mid-2000s of a decades-long practice of denying divorce requests. This talk discusses key findings from his new book of the same name. Michelson's analysis of almost 150,000 divorce trials reveals routine and egregious violations of China's own laws upholding the freedom of divorce, gender equality, and the protection of women's physical security. Michelson takes the reader upstream to the institutional sources of China's clampdown on divorce and downstream to its devastating and highly gendered human toll, showing how judges in an overburdened court system clear their oppressive dockets at the expense of women's lawful rights and interests.
Topic:
Women, Courts, Justice, Gender, and Divorce
Political Geography:
China and Asia

3. Conceptualization and Operationalization of Ambiguous Loss Among Left Behind Children in Rural China

Author:
Xiaojin Chen and Yao Lu
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
This lecture explores the effects of rural-to-urban migration on children’s development, including child abuse, victimization, and mental health problems.
Topic:
Development, Migration, Children, Mental Health, Urban, Rural, Abuse, and Victimization
Political Geography:
China and Asia

4. Daring to Struggle: China's Global Ambitions Under Xi Jinping

Author:
Bates Gill and Elizabeth Wishnick
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Daring to Struggle focuses on six increasingly important interests for today's China—legitimacy, sovereignty, wealth, power, leadership and ideas—and details how the determined pursuit of them at home and abroad profoundly shapes its foreign relationships, contributing to a more contested strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.
Topic:
Sovereignty, Leadership, Legitimacy, Xi Jinping, Strategic Interests, Power, and Wealth
Political Geography:
China and Asia

5. Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China

Author:
Jérôme Doyon and Andrew J. Nathan
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Working for the administration remains one of the most coveted career paths for young Chinese. Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China seeks to understand what motivates young and educated Chinese to commit to a long-term career in the party-state and how this question is central to the Chinese regime’s ability to maintain its cohesion and survive. Jérôme Doyon draws upon extensive fieldwork and statistical analysis in order to illuminate the undogmatic commitment recruitment techniques and other methods the state has taken to develop a diffuse allegiance to the party-state in the post-Mao era. He then analyzes recruitment and political professionalization in the Communist Party’s youth organizations and shows how experiences in the Chinese Communist Youth League transform recruits and feed their political commitment as they are gradually inducted into the world of officials. As the first in-depth study of the Communist Youth League’s role in recruitment, this book challenges the assumption that merit is the main criteria for advancement within the party-state, an argument with deep implications for understanding Chinese politics today.
Topic:
Communism, Politics, History, Youth, and Elites
Political Geography:
China and Asia

6. Imperfect Partners: The United States and Southeast Asia

Author:
Scot Marciel and Ann Marie Murphy
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
This event will discuss U.S.-Southeast Asian relations with Ambassador Scot Marciel, the former United States Ambassador to Indonesia and Myanmar. The talk will be based on his new book which will be released on March 15, 2023 entitled Imperfect Partners: the United States and Southeast Asia. Imperfect Partners is a unique hybrid – part memoir, part foreign policy study of U.S. relations with Southeast Asia, a critically important region that has become the central arena in the global U.S.-China competition. From the People Power revolt in the Philippines to the opening of diplomatic relations with Vietnam, from building a partnership with newly democratic Indonesia to responding to genocide in Myanmar and coups in Thailand, Scot Marciel was present and involved. His direct involvement and deep knowledge of the region, along with his extensive policymaking work in Washington, allows him to bring to life the complexities and realities of key events and U.S. responses, along with rare insights into U.S. foreign policy decision-making and the work of American diplomats in the field.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Competition
Political Geography:
China, Indonesia, Asia, North America, Southeast Asia, Myanmar, and United States of America

7. Understanding Qing Officialdom Through Big Data

Author:
Cameron Campbell and Junyan Jiang
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Cameron Campbell is Chair Professor in the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Before joining HKUST in 2013, he was Professor in the Department of Sociology at UCLA and an affiliate of the California Centre for Population Research (CCPR) at UCLA. His research focuses on demography, stratification and inequality in historical China and in comparative perspective. With other members of the Lee-Campbell group, he studies official, educational, and professional elites in China from the middle of the 18th century to the present. He also leads the study of the Qing civil service from the middle of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century by construction and analysis of a database of office holders called the China Government Employee Database-Qing (CGED-Q). He is involved in two other major projects with the Lee-Campbell Group that involve the creation and analysis of large, longitudinal, individual-level databases from archival records: a study of the social origins and careers of university students, professionals, and other elites in the first half of the twentieth century and a study of rural society in mainland China from 1949 to the mid-1960s using village-level microdata. His papers have appeared in such journals as American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, Population Studies, and Demographic Research. I was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2004 and a Changjiang Scholar at Central China Normal University from 2017 to 2020. For 2022-23, I will be a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Topic:
History and Civil Services
Political Geography:
China and Asia

8. Rethinking "China" and the "Cold War"

Author:
Chien Wen Kung and Eugenia Lean
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Fears of Southeast Asia’s Chinese as conduits for the People's Republic of China defined the Cold War in Southeast Asia. Yet, ironically, the example of the Philippine Chinese shows that the "China" which intervened the most extensively in any Southeast Asian country after 1949 was the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. Based on the speaker’s book, Diasporic Cold Warriors, this talk explains how one of the smallest overseas Chinese communities in the region became the most ardent diasporic supporters of the ROC in the world from the 1950s to the 1970s. During this period, the Kuomintang-ROC party-state's overseas Chinese networks entrenched themselves in the Philippines with the consent and participation of the Philippine state, giving rise to a dynamic and contingent arrangement of shared, non-territorial sovereignty. Taipei and Manila's intersecting anticommunist projects were, in turn, instrumental to how translocal Chinese forged politically appropriate identities and adapted themselves to the postcolonial Philippines as ethno-ideological subjects.
Topic:
Cold War, History, and Regional Politics
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia

9. Treason by the Margins of the Book: Censorship, Philology, History and Memory in 18th Century China

Author:
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite and Eugenia Lean
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
This talk brings from the archives a hitherto unknown case of a minor scholar from Northern China who punished brutally for writing 16 characters about “barbarians” that he wrote on the margins of a forgotten 3rd century book. The talk traces the history of case all the way back to the 3rd century, and analyses it by looking at the scholarly and familial lineages to which it belonged. Looking at the ethnographical dimensions of the case we then turn to discuss what it means for New Qing History and particularly Qing ideology during the Qianlong period.
Topic:
History, Memory, Censorship, Qing Dynasty, and Philology
Political Geography:
China and Asia

10. Reading The Backstreets in Ürümchi: Translation as Ethnographic Method and Practice of Refusal

Author:
Darren Byler and Andrew J. Nathan
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
While conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Northwest China in 2014, anthropologist Darren Byler found that a Uyghur language novel, The Backstreets, helped Uyghurs to narrate their own stories. By shifting the frame of the narrative of colonial violence away from the authority of the state toward the work it takes for the colonized to live, this difficult, absurdist fable gave young Uyghurs a way to articulate experiences of dehumanization and rage. With its English-language translation and publication, it also gave the novelist, Perhat Tursun, a way of refusing his own silencing through censorship and, ultimately, imprisonment. The Backstreets in Ürümchi is a novel by Perhat Tursun, a leading Uyghur writer, poet, and social critic from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Perhat Tursun has published many short stories and poems as well as three novels, including the controversial The Art of Suicide (1999), decried as anti-Islamic. In 2018, he was detained by the Chinese authorities and was reportedly given a sixteen-year prison sentence. Byler was a cotranslator with ‘Anonymous,’ who disappeared in 2017, and is presumed to be in the reeducation camp system in northwest China. This event would be meaningful to students and faculty in many different areas of the university including the above proposed cosponsors, and students of China and Inner Asia.
Topic:
Culture, Minorities, Ethnography, Literature, Language, and Uyghurs
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Xinjiang

11. What Does the US-China Tech Cold War Mean for the Middle East?

Author:
Alistair Taylor and Mohammed Soliman
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
On this week's episode Alistair Taylor, MEI's editor-in-chief, is joined by Mohammed Soliman, director of MEI's Strategic Technologies and Cyber Security Program, to discuss the US-China tech Cold War and what it means for the Middle East. At the nexus of great power competition and rapid technological advances in areas like semiconductors and AI, the rivalry between Washington and Beijing is fuelling a longer-term process of economic and technological decoupling. Navigating this growing divide will be a key challenge for regional actors across MENA.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Science and Technology, Cybersecurity, Economy, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China, Middle East, and United States of America

12. Power and Restraint in China's Rise

Author:
Chin-Hao Huang and Nick R. Smith
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Power and Restraint in China’s Rise Why and when does China exercise restraint—and how does this aspect of Chinese statecraft challenge the conventional narrative about rising powers’ behavior? In his recently published book, Power and Restraint in China’s Rise (Columbia University Press 2022), Chin-Hao Huang argues that China’s aspirations for legitimacy and acceptance provide a key rationale for refraining from coercive measures. Offering new insights into the causes and consequences of change in recent Chinese foreign policy, the findings show why paying attention to the targets of Chinese power matters and what the future of engagement with China might look like.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Power Politics, Political Science, Engagement, and Power
Political Geography:
China and Asia

13. Taiwan Update: Local Elections and Cross-Strait Relations

Author:
Hungdah Su Dean, Yeong-Kang Chen, Min-Hua Huang, Eric Yu, Yeh-Chung Lu, Andrew Nathan, and Thomas J. Christensen
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
A high-level academic delegation will update our audience on current political events in Taiwan and developments in cross-strait relations.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, Elections, and Regional Politics
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and Asia

14. Studying Maltreatment Through Polyvictimization: Evidence from the Salar Ethnic Group in Qinghai

Author:
Clifton R. Emery and Qin Gao
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
This lecture uses in-depth river of life oral history data collected from 200 Salar mothers in Qinghai, China to study the invasiveness, exploitativeness, and severity of victimization among children. This event is part of the 2022-2023 lecture series on “Urbanization, Well-being, and Public Policy: China from Comparative Perspectives” and is sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and cosponsored by Columbia's China Center for Social Policy and the Columbia Global Centers | Beijing.
Topic:
Minorities, Ethnicity, Oral History, Victimization, and Qinghai
Political Geography:
China and Asia

15. The Urbanization of People- The Politics of Development in the Chinese City

Author:
Eli Friedman and Yao Lu
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
The Urbanization of People (May 2022, Columbia University Press) reveals how cities in China have granted public goods to the privileged while condemning poor and working-class migrants to insecurity, constant mobility, and degraded educational opportunities. Using the school as a lens on urban life, Eli Friedman investigates how the state manages flows of people into the city. He demonstrates that urban governments are providing quality public education to those who need it least: school admissions for nonlocals heavily favor families with high levels of economic and cultural capital. Those deemed not useful are left to enroll their children in precarious resource-starved private schools that sometimes are subjected to forced demolition. Over time, these populations are shunted away to smaller locales with inferior public services. Based on extensive ethnographic research and hundreds of in-depth interviews, this interdisciplinary book details the policy framework that produces unequal outcomes as well as providing a fine-grained account of the life experiences of people drawn into the cities as workers but excluded as full citizens.
Topic:
Development, Politics, Urbanization, and Cities
Political Geography:
China and Asia

16. On Dangerous Ground: America’s Century in the South China Sea

Author:
Gregory Poling, Anne Marie Murphy, Andrew J. Nathan, and Thomas J. Christensen
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
A robust yet accessible history of US involvement in the world's most dangerous waterway, and a guide for what to do about it. Lamentations that the United States is "losing" the South China Sea to China are now common. China has rapidly militarized islands and reefs, projects power across the disputed waterway, and freely harasses US allies and partners. The US has been unable to halt these processes or convince Beijing to respect the rights of smaller neighbors. But what exactly would "losing" mean? In On Dangerous Ground, Gregory B. Poling evaluates US interests in the world's most complex and dangerous maritime disputes by examining more than a century of American involvement in the South China Sea. He focuses on how the disputes there intersected and eventually intertwined with the longstanding US commitment to freedom of the seas and its evolving alliance network in Asia. He shows that these abiding national interests—defense of maritime rights and commitment to allies, particularly the Philippines—have repeatedly pulled US attention to the South China Sea. Understanding how and why is critical if the US and its allies hope to chart a course through the increasingly fraught disputes, while facing a more assertive, more capable, and far less compromising China. With an emphasis on decisions made not just in Washington and Beijing, but also in Manila and other Southeast Asian capitals, On Dangerous Ground seeks to correct the record and balance the China-centric narrative that has come to dominate the issue. It not only provides the most comprehensive account yet of America's history in the South China Sea, but it also demonstrates how that history should inform US national security policy in one of the most important waterways in the world.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, National Security, Territorial Disputes, and Maritime
Political Geography:
China, Asia, United States of America, and South China Sea

17. Assessing the Chinese Communist Party 20th Party Congress

Author:
Thomas J. Christensen, Shang-Jin Wei, Junyang Jiang, Xiaobo Lü, Sun Zhe, and Andrew J. Nathan
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Assessing the political and foreign policy implications of whatever happens at the 20th Party Congress, presumably including Xi Jinping’s election to a third term as party General Secretary.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Political Geography:
China and Asia

18. Starr Forum: The Future of US - China Relations

Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
Moderator: Taylor Fravel is Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the MIT Security Studies Program (SSP). He studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China, and East Asia. Panelists: Eric Heginbotham is a principal research scientist at MIT’s Center for International Studies (CIS) and SSP. He is a specialist in Asian security issues. Before joining MIT, he was a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where he led research projects on China, Japan, and regional security issues. Ketian Vivian Zhang is an assistant professor of international Security in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. She studies rising powers, coercion, economic statecraft, and maritime disputes in international relations and social movements in comparative politics, with a regional focus on China and East Asia. Ali Wyne is a senior analyst with Eurasia Group's Global Macro practice, where he focuses on US-China relations and great-power competition. He is the author of a forthcoming book, America's Great-Power Opportunity: Revitalizing US Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, Hegemony, Strategic Competition, Rivalry, and Strategic Interests
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

19. Cross-Strait and U.S.-Taiwan Relations from the Kuomintang Point of View

Author:
Alexander Huang, Eric Huang, Johnny Chiang, Thomas J. Christensen, and Andrew Nathan
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Speaker Bios: Alexander Huang is the Associate Professor of the Institute of Strategic Studies at Tamkang University, the Chairman & CEO of the Council on Strategic & Wargaming Studies, and Special Advisor to the Chairman & Director of International Affairs at Kuomintang (KMT). Dr. Huang received his BA in Political Science at Soochow University in 1982, earned a MA from the Institute of Strategic Studies at Tamkang University 1984 and a MSFS from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1988. In 1994, Dr. Huang received a PhD in Political Science from George Washington University. Eric Yu-Chua Huang is the KMT’s Representative in Washington D.C., and an entrepreneur. Mr. Huang previously served as the party's spokesperson and deputy director of international affairs, a lecturer of International affairs at Tamkang University, and non-residential research fellow at National Policy Foundation. Mr. Huang joined the KMT party headquarters in 2014 after which he served as the international spokesperson for the KMT’s presidential candidate during Taiwan’s 2016 presidential election campaign. Previously, Mr. Huang worked as legislative aide for a KMT legislator representing a constituency in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei City, where his portfolio included national security and foreign relations, as well as constituent services and youth organizing. Mr. Huang graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a Master’s degree in International Relations; he earned his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Virginia majoring in International Relations; in 2018 he was a Visiting Scholar at Fudan University. Johnny C. Chiang was elected the chairman of the KMT to rejuvenate the party in 2020. The KMT ruled Taiwan from 1949 to 2000 and from 2008 to 2016, and is now the main opposition in Taiwan. During August 2018-July 2019, Dr. Chiang was the convener (caucus whip) of KMT Party Caucus in Legislative Yuan. From August in 2016 to January in 2017, he took charge of the secretary of KMT party Caucus in Legislative Yuan. In 2016, he held the post of the convener in Foreign and National Defense Committee; Previously, in 2013 he ever served as the convener in Internal Administration Affair Committee. Besides, as to international inter- parliamentary exchanging activities, he currently serves as the chairmen of R.O.C(Taiwan)-United Kingdom Inter-Parliamentary Amity Association. He is also the chairman of R.O.C(Taiwan)-Singapore Inter-Parliamentary Amity Association. Dr. Chiang received his Ph. D. in International Studies from the University of South Carolina and his master degree of public and international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh. He has previously served as Minister of Government Information Office (GIO) as well as Government Spokesman of Executive Yuan, ROC (2010- 2011); Deputy Executive Director of Chinese Taipei APEC Study Center (2009-2010); Director of International Affairs Department, Taiwan Institute of Economic Research(2005-2010); Deputy Secretary-General, Chinese Taipei National Committee of Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) (2005-2010); Associate professor, department of political science at the Soochow University in Taipei (2003-2010). In 2021, Dr. Johnny Chiang was named by Time magazine to be one of the "100 emerging leaders who are shaping the future." In 2006, Dr. Chiang was selected as the Top 10 rising stars in Taiwan. His research interests widely cover such areas as international political economy, international organizations (especially APEC and WTO), Asia- Pacific studies, cross-Strait relations, globalization and international relations theory. This event is sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and cosponsored by the China and the World Program.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, Asia, and United States of America

20. The Wuhan Lockdown

Author:
Guobin Yang and Qin Gao
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
In this book talk, the author tells the dramatic story of the Wuhan lockdown in the voices of the city’s own people. Using a vast archive of more than 6,000 diaries, the sociologist Guobin Yang vividly depicts how the city coped during the crisis. He analyzes how the state managed—or mismanaged—the lockdown and explores how Wuhan’s residents responded by taking on increasingly active roles. Yang demonstrates that citizen engagement—whether public action or the civic inaction of staying at home—was essential in the effort to fight the pandemic. The book features compelling stories of citizens and civic groups in their struggle against COVID-19: physicians, patients, volunteers, government officials, feminist organizers, social media commentators, and even aunties loudly swearing at party officials. These snapshots from the lockdown capture China at a critical moment, revealing the intricacies of politics, citizenship, morality, community, and digital technology. This event is part of the 2021-2022 lecture series on “COVID-19 Impacts and Responses in China and Beyond” and is co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and the China Center for Social Policy.
Topic:
Crisis Management, Pandemic, Domestic Policy, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China and Asia