2024-2025 LRCCS Event Videos

David Zweig, Professor Emeritus, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

This talk documents China’s “over-the-top” effort to gain the help of immensely talented Chinese who were living and working in the US, as well as the US government’s harsh counterattack, and its strategy to disrupt the transfer of US technology to China. The case studies include stories of unknown victims of that campaign whose cases were never made public. It also highlights the harm this war has brought to Sino-American scientific collaboration and the education of Chinese students in America.

David Zweig (PhD, The University of Michigan, 1983) is Professor Emeritus, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Taipei School of Economics and Political Science, National Tsinghua University, Taiwan, and Vice-President of the Center for China and Globalization (Beijing). He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard in 1984-85, and received the Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship, Research Grants Council, Hong Kong, 2013-14. For 15 years, he directed the Center on China’s Transnational Relations at HKUST.

Tarryn Li-Min Chun, Assistant Professor, Department of Film, Television and Theatre, University of Notre Dame

In this talk, Dr. Chun will draw on her recently published book, "Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China" (University of Michigan Press, 2024) to discuss deep entanglements among technological modernization, political agendas, and the performing arts in China from the 1920s to the early 1980s. By examining both iconic performances and little-known plays from the perspective of the stage technologies involved, this talk reveals the complex and at times surprising ways in which Chinese theater artists and technicians of the 20th century envisioned and enacted their own political and artistic revolutions through the materiality of the theater apparatus.

Tarryn Li-Min Chun is Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on intersections of performance, technology, and media in modern and contemporary Sinophone theatre. She is author of "Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China" (University of Michigan Press, 2024) and co-editor with Xiaomei Chen and Siyuan Liu of "Rethinking Socialist Theaters of Reform: Performance Practice and Debate in the Mao Era" (University of Michigan Press, 2022). Her work has appeared in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, TDR, and Asian Theatre Journal, and several edited volumes. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (USA) and other awards.

Siqi Zheng, STL Champion Chair Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability CRE, DUSP and SA+P, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The US’s tariffs against China created a wedge between mutually beneficial trades between China's producers and US consumers. Moving production to nearby Vietnam allows firms to jump the tariff wall. We show that locations within Vietnam closer to China gain more—a border effect—in output and new FDI, particularly for industries producing goods with strong demand from the US and larger S301 tariff increase for China exports. We also analyze the environmental impact of Vietnam's surging economic growth and find that Vietnam is not repeating China's economic development story that features severe pollution. Large multinational companies' FDI and the government's commitment to clean energy development safeguard Vietnam's blue skies.

Stephen Angle, Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies and Professor of Philosophy, Wesleyan University

Drawing on recent work emphasizing the role of emotional or affective reactions in Wang Yangming's thought, this presentation offers new understandings of Wang's key theoretical concepts.

Stephen C. Angle is Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies and Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University. Angle specializes in Confucianism and comparative philosophy, and he is the author of five books, including "Growing Moral: A Confucian Guide to Life" (Oxford, 2022).

Andrew Mertha, George and Sadie Hyman Professor of China Studies; Director, SAIS China Research Center, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)

As our access to Chinese data sources becomes increasingly constrained, many China scholars outside China have been scrambling to find new and innovative ways to mitigate these trends. One promising avenue is dusting off the tools Sinologists utilized from the 1960s through the 1970s, when it was impossible to contemplate the access that many of us have been able to take for granted, but which allowed these scholars to get so many things about China right. What are these skills—the analytical tools and the strategies to deploy them—and how might we be able to adapt them to the current research climate (and the foreseeable future)? This is the subject of the SAIS China Research Center’s first publication, featuring four eminent Pekingologists – Joe Fewsmith, Tom Fingar, Alice Miller, and Fred Tiewes. Access here.

Andrew Mertha is the George and Sadie Hyman Professor of China Studies, Director of the China Studies Program, and Director of the SAIS China Research Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). From 2019 to 2021, Mertha served as the Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs and International Research Cooperation at SAIS. He has held positions as formerly a professor of Government at Cornell University (2008-2018) and an assistant professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis (2001-2008). And a Michigan PhD! Mertha specializes in Chinese bureaucratic politics, political institutions, and the domestic and foreign policy process. Since 2009, he has extended his research interests to include Cambodia. He has articles appearing in The China Quarterly, Comparative Politics, International Organization, Issues & Studies, CrossCurrents, and Orbis. His fourth monograph is forthcoming in May from Cornell University Press – Bad Lieutenants: The Khmer Rouge, United Front, and Class Struggle, 1970–1997.

Hilary Smith, Associate Professor of History, University of Denver 

In this talk, Dr. Smith argues that starting in the early twentieth century, the acolytes of a new discipline called nutrition science began to research Chinese bodies and diets in ways that made them appear to be inherently deficient and even pathological. Seeking to explain the unequal power relations that underlay the imperialist world order, both foreign and some Chinese scientists blamed the Chinese nation’s political weakness and poor health on bad food choices. Although the age of formal empires is past, the traces of what she calls nutritional imperialism persist.

Hilary A. Smith is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Denver. She writes about the history of science and medicine in China. She is the author of Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine (Stanford, 2017) and is currently finishing a book about nutritional imperialism. She has received a Fulbright US Scholar Grant as well as support from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, and other awards.

Speakers:

• Yun Sun, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the East Asia Program and Director of the China Program, Stimson Center
• Mark Magnier, US Deputy Bureau Chief of South China Morning Post

Moderator:

• Ann Chih Lin, Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel Professor of Chinese Studies; Associate Professor, Public Policy/Political Science

This event was a collaborative effort hosted by the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, the Nam Center for Korean Studies, and the Center for South Asian Studies. The seminar aimed to provide a comprehensive analysis of the evolving dynamics between the United States, India, and China in the context of President Trump's second term. 

Speakers:

• Seema Sirohi, Indian journalist and Economic Times Columnist 
• Michael Kugelman, Director, South Asia Institute, Wilson Center 
• Yun Sun, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the East Asia Program and Director of the China Program, Stimson Center 
• Mark Magnier, US Deputy Bureau Chief of South China Morning Post 

Moderator:

• Ji Yeon (Jean) Hong, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan

This event was a collaborative effort hosted by the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, the Nam Center for Korean Studies, and the Center for South Asian Studies. The seminar aimed to provide a comprehensive analysis of the evolving dynamics between the United States, India, and China in the context of President Trump's second term.