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Here on this page you will find a number of podcasts and videos of previous events run by our Institute.

Lord Green: October 2015
China & Europe

Steven Green,  former chair of HSBC has a career spanning almost five decades. In this talk he compares and contrasts Europe and China from Confucius to Aristotle to the present day. For more information on this speaker and the talk please click here.

Shen Dingli October 2015
China’s Peaceful Rise: Challenges & Opportunities

Deputy Dean of  the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University and former advisor to Kofi Annan, Shen Dingli research and publications focus mainly on China-US security relations.For more information on this speaker and the talk please click here.

WAGnet Conference: September 2015
Memory, Gender & Change in China

A day long symposium on the above with contributions from a range of speakers on a variety of topics.  For more information on this event and the topics covered please click here.

KEYNOTE and PANEL 1

PANEL 2 and PANEL 3

Dr Andreas Guder, March 2015
Chinese as a Foreign Language in Germany

Dr Andreas Guder is based in Freie Universitat, Berlin where he is head of Chinese Language Study and Chairman of the Association of Chinese Teachers in German Speaking Countries. For more information on this speaker and his talk please click here.

David Shambaugh: March 2015
China at the Crossroads? Major Reform Challenges

David Shambaugh is Professor of Political Science & International Affairs and founding Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. For more information on this speaker and his talk please click here.

Wang Ban: June 2015
Where Have All the villages Gone?

Wang Ban is the William Haas Professor in Chinese Studies and a board member of the Confucius Institute at Stanford University. His research focuses on Chinese and comparative literature, and additionally  he has written on English and French literatures, psychoanalysis, international politics, and cinema. For more information on this speaker and his talk please click here.

Zhang Longxi: April 2015
Reconceptualising China in our Time

A leading scholar in East-West cross-cultural studies Zhang Longxi holds an MA from Peking University and a Ph.D. from Harvard. He is currently Chair Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation at City University Hong Kong. For more information on this speaker and his talk please click here.

Lin Zhaohua: August 2013
Shakespeare in China

Following the staging of The Tragedy of Coriolanus at the Edinburgh International Festival by China`s best known director of modern drama, LIN Zhaohua, our Institute hosted an afternoon conversation session with him in partnership with the British Council and EIF in which he discussed this production and Chinese modern theatre.

Jim O Neill, June 2012
China and Its Place in the World

As chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) Jim was involved in helping guide all aspects of GSAM’s businesses around the world. One of the world’s most famous economists with over ten years experience at Goldman Sachs, Jim O Neill has a global reputation as a famous economist. Creator of the acronym BRICs, he has published extensively on the emergence of the BRIC economies -Brazil, Russia, India and China This video extract was recorded in June 2012 on the topic of ‘China and Its Place in the World’.

For more information on this speaker and his talk please click here.

Stephen Perry: May 2012
Everyone should understand China

Stephen Perry has been involved with China since his earliest days as his father was the leader of the Icebreaker group to China in 1953 which restarted UK-China trade relations just one year after starting up the business in which Stephen is today Managing Director, London Export Corporation.  He is also Chairman of the 48 Group Club. For more information on this speaker and his talk please click here.

Adam Dupre: April 2012
China/Scotland: the global context

Adam was the founder of China Company Research Services and the opening speaker in the Institute’s Business Lecture Series – China, Scotland and the World. An ex officio Vice President of the 48 Group Club he initiated earlier visits to Scotland by the Chinese Ambassador and the Chinese Minister of Education. For more information on this speaker and his talk please click here.

Join us when Prof Erik Baark from Hong Kong University of Science & Technology poses the question China – A Science & Technology Superpower?

With the rapid growth of Chinese investments in science and technology, and the expansion of outputs in terms of scientific articles, patents, and technological capabilities, some observers have predicted that China is on its way to becoming a technological superpower. This prediction is naturally based on the rapid developments in the input of R&D investment and output of scientific publications and patents that have taken place in China during the recent decades. But what does the concept of a scientific and technological superpower imply? In this talk, Erick Baark will discuss several interpretations of the concept of superpower and provide a preliminary assessment of key trends that have been seen as the promise of China’s emerging status. In his conclusion,he proposes that if, indeed, China is becoming an S&T superpower, one can hope that it will become a different type of superpower.

Erik Baark is Professor at the Division of Social Science and the Division of Environment at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. He completed a PhD at the University of Lund (1986) and a Dr.phil. at the University of Copenhagen (1998). His primary research interests are related to innovation systems and science and technology policy in China and other East Asian countries. His research on China includes analysis of information systems and IT development and high technology entrepreneurship during recent policy reforms. He has also published extensively on innovation in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta. He has published edited volumes and monographs, including Lightning Wires: Telegraphs and China’s Technological Modernization 1860-1890 (Greenwood Press, 1997). He has also published articles in leading international area studies journals such as The China Quarterly and innovation research journals such as Research Policy and the International Journal of Technology Management.

Lecture: China – A Science & Technology Superpower?
Speaker: Prof Erik Baark, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
Date: Wednesday 25th November
Time: 3.30-5.00
Venue: Room LT2, University of Edinburgh Business School, 29 Buccleuch Place

For further information contact: X.Shen@ed.ac.uk

Jointly organized by the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation and The Confucius Institute for Scotland in the University of Edinburgh. http://www.issti.ed.ac.uk/

Professor Tony Chan, President of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Asia’s No 1 University for three years in a row, will give a guest lecture on the topic of Rising China and Global Impact.

Globalisation, which calls for responses from many different sectors and stakeholders around the world, brings opportunities along with challenges. As such, rising China in the global arena is playing an increasingly important role in addressing the global imperative and shaping international agenda.  In the global marketplace, no champion can excel on its own.

How does one make sense of this ‘new’ internationalisation?  How does a university find its place in the midst of global cross currents? In the globalised context, which is always in flux, how do we go beyond traditional confines to soar as global players with global impact?

Biography

Professor Tony F Chan assumed the presidency of HKUST in Sept 2009.  Prior to this appointment he was Assistant Director of the the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), which is the largest directorate at NSF.

Professor Chan’s scientific background is in Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering. He received his BS and MS degrees in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. He pursued postdoctoral research at Caltech as Research Fellow, and taught Computer Science at Yale University before joining the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) as Professor of Mathematics in 1986. He was appointed Chair of the Department of Mathematics in 1997 and served as Dean of Physical Sciences from 2001 to 2006. He also holds honorary joint appointments with the University’s BioEngineering Department and the Computer Science Department.

Event Details

Friday 13 November 2015
3.15.-4.00pm
Lecture Theatre 2, Appleton Tower, 11 Crichton St, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE

For more information on HKUST please click here.

We are delighted to welcome Dong Zhenghua, formerly Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Peking University and now Professor of Chu Hai College for Higher Education, Hong Kong as the sixth speaker in our Distinguished Lecture Series 2015. His talk is entitled Farmland for Farmers: Problems of Large-scale Enclosure of Farmland in China.

Synopsis

One key question in today’s China is how to protect the farmers’ farmland? Under China’s ‘collective farmland ownership’ system, ultimate ownership of land is difficult to determine. With a growing economy, demand for land also grows.

Local government and real estate companies, can all too easily requisition land in the name of public demand with minimal compensation to the farmers. Conversely there is an increasing need for more agricultural activity.

At present there is a danger of large-scale enclosure of farmland becoming an acute issue and land related disputes being exacerbated. Is the solution to confer peasant families with perpetual rights under the Constitution? What would the impact of such a policy be and is there a way ahead which will treat individuals fairly and address the conflicting demands?

Biography

Dong Zhenghua, former Director of the Centre for Modernization Studies (1999-2014) and Distinguished Professor of Humanities (2012-14) at Peking University, is currently a Professor  at Chu Hai College for Higher Education, Hong Kong.

His publications on agrarian problems include

• Farmers onto Modernity (2014);
• Nanjie Village: a Market Oriented Collective (Equity, Exclusion and Liberalization: a debate among historians-Papers of the 1996 SEPHIS workshop, Zanzibar);
• Reserve the Land for Family Farming: On the Use of Farmland and the Future of the Peasantry in China (Global Capitalism and the Future of Agrarian Society, 2012);
• Does China Need to Develop Agrarian Capitalism? (Chinese Studies in History, vol. 47, no.2, Winter 2013-14. M.E. Sharpe, Inc.)

Event Details

This talk will take place in the lower ground level lecture theatre LG.11 of the David Hume Tower, University of Edinburgh, EH8 9JY from 6.30pm.  A drinks reception will follow.  All welcome

This term the Chinese Studies seminar series features three visiting speakers on 21 October, 4 November and 18 November. All seminars will take place at 50 George Square from 15.00-17.00 in either G.05 or G.06.   The next lecture is on Wednesday 4 November.

Wednesday 4 November G.05 : 17.00-19.00

Dr Gerda Wielander (University of Westminster)
Happiness in recent Chinese socialist discourse – has Ah Q become a role model?

Happiness and prosperity have been core to Chinese socialist thinking from its inception. The Revolutionary Alliance Programme of 1905 used the term fuzhi to express its aspirations for a new society, a term most recently reintroduced by Xi Jinping in 2013. Socialism has never just been an aspiration to prosperity and redistribution of resources; it has always also held the promise of a new society, which would bring spiritual as well as materialistic transformation. In psychological terms, this anticipated transformation was built on the concept of “revolutionary spirit” (Larson 2009).

In this talk I argue that the emphasis on happiness we see in Chinese political discourse today ties in with the renewed emphasis on socialist values. It also highlights the ideological dilemma the party is facing as a ruling party which continues to espouse visions of ‘groundbreaking changes’ and future utopian societies while at the same time trying to elicit quiet contentment from all, including the most disaffected, by focusing their minds on seeing the glass half full. While adopting the proper spirit remains a key characteristic of subjective feelings of happiness, what exactly constitutes the proper spirit has changed from revolutionary optimism to something more akin to Ah Q’s “spiritual victory” method.

Gerda Wielander is Reader in Chinese Studies and Head of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Westminster, London. She obtained her Masters and PhD degrees from the University of Vienna with theses on Liang Qichao’s historiography (MA) and the contemporary Chinese language press in Malaysia (PhD). Her main research interest lies in the link between the personal and spiritual to wider social and political developments in modern and contemporary China. She is the author of Christian Values in Communist China (Routledge 2013) as well as several journal articles and book chapters. She is currently working on an interdisciplinary edited volume with the working title Perspectives on Chinese Happiness.

Wednesday 18 November G.06

Dr Phillipa Lovatt (University of Stirling)
Sound Music and Memory in JIa Zhangke’s ‘Hometown Trilogy‘

In Jia Zhangke’s ‘Hometown Trilogy’ the complex diegetic soundscapes, which are often recorded using the documentary method of ‘direct sound’, are represented as ‘occupied’ spaces: acoustic realms that are densely layered with the competing discourses of reform-era China. This paper explores how this experience of lived space during the period of China’s rapid transformation in the years following the end of the Cultural Revolution is articulated through sound and music. Through detailed analysis of particular scenes in Xiao Wu (1997), Platform (2000), Unknown Pleasures (2002) and his first student film Xiaoshan Going Home (1995), the paper will discuss how the layering of acoustic space within the films communicates the ways in which social and personal memories are connected by establishing both the atmosphere of an era within the diegetic space of the film through music, radio or television broadcasts for example, and by setting the (sometimes conflicting) emotional tone for each scene.

Wednesday 21 October G.05 – Now completed

Dr Charlotte Goodburn (Kings College, London)
Rural-urban Migration, Citizenship and China’s 2014 hukou reforms

In July 2014 the State Council announced ground-breaking hukou reforms, abolishing the urban/rural distinction that has existed since the 1950s. Much scholarship on citizenship in China, influenced by Dorothy Solinger’s important work, has focused on urban versus rural hukou as defining a binary system of unequal citizenship, privileging urbanites and denying genuine membership to rural people. Rural-urban migrants are in the worst position of all since, despite making up a third of China’s urban population, they are often unable to access urban state resources, including education, healthcare, housing schemes and social welfare.

Based on this picture, we might expect the 2014 hukou reform to have an equalising effect. However, this paper draws on the author’s research in Shenzhen and on other work on rural-urban migration to argue that, in fact, citizenship statuses are more complicated than Solinger’s model implies. In particular, the distinction between local and non-local, interpreted differently in cities of different sizes and now enshrined in the 2014 hukou reforms, creates a hierarchy of citizenship statuses with varying impacts on migrants of different ages, genders and areas of origin. Rather than moving towards universalization of Chinese citizenship rights, then, the current trajectory is actually one of increased citizenship differentiation.

The paper concludes by proposing an alternative theoretical model of Chinese citizenship, based on recent literature on international migration and citizenship. Drawing on concepts such as “probationary” citizenship, “localised” citizenship and “undocumented” migrants, it suggests a more nuanced way of thinking about citizenship and rural-urban migration in China.

As a distinguished scholar we are delighted to host Prof Shen Dingli, Deputy Dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University to deliver a lecture on China’s Peaceful Rise: Challenges & Opportunities.

Synopsis

China’s rise certainly brings more opportunities to the world: increasing import of goods and services; and increasing export of tourist purchasing power, to name a few.  In terms of soft power, China is rapidly investing on its green energy sector and collaborating on climate change.  It is a major force of international combat against terror and pandemic diseases.  It is more visible on UN peacekeeping and disaster relief missions abroad.  Meantime, its rise does alter the world balance of power.  China’s rising strength of export and investment brings it more competence in manufacturing and international finance.  Its land and maritime Silk Road program offers the prospects of a better connected Eurasian continent.  Its ambition on the global commons has yet to reconcile with the concerns of the others.  This lecture will address the aforementioned issues, analysing China’s policy contour and its regional impact, especially on its relations with the neighbours and the United States.

BIOGRAPHY

Professor Shen Dingli is Deputy Dean of  the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University.  His research and publications focus on China-US security relations; regional security and international strategy; arms control and non-proliferation; foreign and defence policy of China, and the US. He received his PhD in physics from Fudan in 1989 and from 1989 to 1991 he engaged in arms control studies at Princeton University. In 1996 he was awarded Eisenhower Fellowship. In 2002 he was invited by Kofi Annan the then Secretary General of the United Nations to advise him on strategy planning for his second term.

Currently he also serves as Vice President at several academic associations, including the Chinese Association of South Asian Studies, Shanghai Association of International Studies, Shanghai Association of American Studies, Shanghai UN Research Association and Shanghai Public Policy Association.

Essential Information

Thursday 29th October 2015 6pm-7.30pm
Project Room 1.06
50 George Square
EH8 9JY

This lecture is part of the Confucius Institute for Scotland Distinguished Lecture Series in which experts and scholars on China and Chinese culture are invited to give a lecture on their chosen topic.

It is also part of the Discover Day programme organised by Fudan University, the Chinese university partner for the Confucius Institute for Scotland.

The latest book from Tim Clissold “Chinese Rules” intriguingly subtitled ‘Mao’s Dog, Deng’s Cat, and Five Timeless Lessons from the Front Lines in China’ is an attempt to explain how China works.

Join the Confucius Institute for Scotland and the China Britain Business Council at this late afternoon talk in which the author, known by the title of his first book Mr China, will discuss the book,  much of the content of which is drawn from his experience of seeking carbon capture investment opportunities in China when the carbon credit market was booming in the noughties.

From the back cover: “Combining exuberant storytelling, sly humour, and counterintuitive insights, Chinese Rules traces Clissold’s latest adventures, providing an object lesson in the contradictions between reality and conventional belief that continue to make China a fascinating, perplexing, and irresistible destination for Westerners”.

The talk will take place at the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation, High School Yards, Infirmary Street, Edinburgh EH1 1LZ from 15.30 – 17.00 on Tuesday 29th Sept 2015.

This talk, which is also supported by SDI, should interest anyone engaged with China through their business or research interests. Registration should be made through the following China Britian Business Council link.