A poster for a Chinese high-speed train at the construction site for a bridge over the Mekong River in Laos
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Paving The Road Away From Reconciliation: The Anatomy Of Injustice In Post-WWII Japanese War Crimes Trials
Zoom
The Tokyo Trial, 1946-1948, and the lesser BC class war crimes trials throughout East Asia of former Japanese soldiers, never get mentioned with the same hushed tones of legal reverence as the Nuremberg Tribunal of Nazis. Why did justice seemingly fail in East Asia when theoretically the same international law was pursued on both sides of the globe? Put another way, if Nuremberg bequeathed an academy to carry forth into the next generation the Nuremberg Principles, what happened in war crimes courts in East Asia that rendered such notions legally impotent? This talk investigates how a history of injustice developed in postwar East Asia and how it came to wield the potent political force it manifests today. READ MORE...
The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan
Zoom
The Great Exodus examines the forced migration from China to Taiwan in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist regime collapsed on the mainland. The migration has largely been understood as a military withdrawal operation or a relocation of government. As such, this mass emigration remains one of the least understood population movements in modern East Asia. Peeling back layers of Cold War ideological constructs on the subject, Yang breaks new ground in Chinese Civil War historiography. He lays bare the traumatic aftermath of the Chinese Communist Revolution for the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who were forcibly displaced across the sea and for the local Taiwanese who were compelled to receive them. The book underscores displaced population’s trauma of living in exile and their poignant “homecomings” in both post-Mao China and post-liberalization Taiwan. It presents a multiple-event trajectory of repeated traumatization with recurring but different memory productions through time in search of home, belonging, and identity. This trajectory challenges established notions of trauma, memory, and diaspora. It speaks to the importance of subject position, boundary-crossing empathic unsettlements, and ethical responsibility of historians in writing, researching, and representing trauma. READ MORE...
The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform, 1969-1984
Zoom
This joint book project with Professor CHEN Jian attempts to provide an easily accessible survey of key developments in what is arguably the most important political, social, and economic transition of the 20th century: China's road from an isolationist revolutionary state to a pragmatic market-oriented regime. By reviewing both China’s domestic and international affairs during its ‘long 1970s’ – from the Ninth Party Congress and the Sino-Soviet clashes in the spring of 1969 up to the Twelfth Party Congress and the opening to the outside world in the early 1980s – the project intends to stress three key themes: The end of the revolutionary phase in Chinese Communist politics, the beginning of a new international orientation for the PRC, and the creation of a new economic system, built from above and from below, that set the stage for the remarkable growth of the 1980s and ‘90s. READ MORE...
The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority
Zoom
Conventionally, US immigration history has been understood through the lens of restriction and those who have been barred from getting in. In contrast, The Good Immigrants considers immigration from the perspective of Chinese elites—intellectuals, businessmen, and students—who gained entrance because of immigration exemptions. Exploring a century of Chinese migrations, Madeline Hsu looks at how the model minority characteristics of many Asian Americans resulted from US policies that screened for those with the highest credentials in the most employable fields, enhancing American economic competitiveness. The earliest US immigration restrictions targeted Chinese people but exempted students as well as individuals who might extend America’s influence in China. Western-educated Chinese such as Madame Chiang Kai-shek became symbols of the US impact on China, even as they patriotically advocated for China’s modernization. World War II and the rise of communism transformed Chinese students abroad into refugees, and the Cold War magnified the importance of their talent and training. As a result, Congress legislated piecemeal legal measures to enable Chinese of good standing with professional skills to become citizens. Pressures mounted to reform American discriminatory immigration laws, culminating with the 1965 Immigration Act. The Good Immigrants examines the shifts in immigration laws and perceptions of cultural traits that enabled Asians to remain in the United States as exemplary, productive Americans. READ MORE...
China and the environment: Ecological Civilisation and its discontents
Zoom
The Chinese government has stated its intention to take the lead on climate change, and “Ecological Civilisation” has become an important slogan for Chinese President Xi Jinping. China has demonstrated a remarkable energy transformation in its domestic market. But Chinese firms, private and state-owned alike, are finding an outlet for overcapacity and shrinking domestic markets by exporting carbon-intensive production overseas. This presents a challenge to the vision of a cleaner power sector in many countries, particularly those at an important inflection point in their development. This talk will examine the impact, drivers and likely trajectory of China’s development and overseas investments, from rhetoric to reality. READ MORE...
Protest in Putin's Russia: opposition and grassroots movements
Zoom
Protest in Russia is often portrayed in terms of a conflict between the Putin regime and its political opponents. However, the most tenacious and successful protest in recent years has been associated with regional movements targeting specific issues, usually linked to the environment or urban development. Resistance to perceived encroachment by the central government is often crucial to these movements, but they do not usually challenge the political system as a whole. READ MORE...
GLOBAL HEALING: MEDICAL HUMANITIES, CHINESE LITERATURE, AND THE WORLD
Zoom
Narratives from diverse communities globally have for millennia engaged with a broad variety of diseases and other serious health conditions. In more recent decades, many have advocated for empathic, compassionate, and respectful care that facilitates healing and enables wellbeing. In this presentation, grounded in my recent book Global Healing: Literature, Advocacy, Care, I’ll discuss the role of literature, and especially Chinese literature, in imploring societies to shatter the devastating social stigmas which prevent billions from accessing effective care; to increase the availability of quality person-focused healthcare; and to prioritize partnerships that facilitate healing and enable wellbeing for both patients and loved ones. I’ll also introduce the fields of the medical humanities and the health humanities and speak to the contributions the study of literature can make in this pandemic era. READ MORE...
From Batallón Colombia to Sixty-nine Ex-POWs: The Unforeseen Impact of Latin America in the Korean War
Zoom
This presentation examines how the Latin American countries of Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile responded to the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. This conflict was the first global conflict in the struggle between communism and capitalism, and therefore, is one of the main starting points in the drawing of future Cold War alliances. Because all independent Latin American countries were part of the establishment of the United Nations in 1945, they would be automatically aligned with the United States. Moreover, since 1947, all these nations had also signed the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance with the United States, which united the entire continent in a reciprocal military alliance. However, when in 1950, the U.S. government triggered the treaty and pleaded for assistance from the Latin American states, the result was frustrating: only Colombia agreed to send troops, while other major countries only contributed with supplies. In 1955, two years after the signing of the armistice, other Latin American countries would also play a significant role, with Brazil and Argentina offering to receive more than fifty prisoners of war who expressed the desire to go to a neutral country during the UN interrogations. Through the Latin American case study, this presentation explains how diplomacy, ideology, military power, economic interests, and domestic issues led each Latin American nation to adopt a different position in response to the Korean War, contradicting most presumed conventions of “automatic alignment” in the Cold War. READ MORE...
被劫持的戰爭：志願軍戰俘、台灣與朝鮮停戰談判
Zoom
常成的新著The Hijacked War: The Story of Chinese POWs in the Korean War 於2020年由斯坦福大學出版社出版。作者提出韓戰兩段論：上半段是「為領土而戰」，後半段則是「為戰俘而戰」。韓戰因為戰俘問題而多打了一年多，造成重大而無謂的犧牲，但後半段的領土變更卻微乎其微，其主要結局是佔中國戰俘總人數三分之二的一萬四千餘人前往台灣，時稱「反共義士」。學術界與民間都普遍認為該結局是美國主謀或美蔣合謀的結果。然而，本書證明該結局完全出乎美國政府的預料，因為華盛頓輕率的兩大政策——對戰俘實施反共轉化（或洗腦）與「志願遣返」——使得反共戰俘控制了中國戰俘營。另一方面，由於美軍缺乏中文人才，不得不從台灣聘用翻譯與教員，於是國民黨人員進入戰俘營、甚至板門店談判帳篷內，促成反共戰俘與台灣的串聯，並使蔣介石掌握先機。於是韓戰後半段意外地被中國籍反共戰俘與台灣所劫持。 美國政府在戰後對韓戰後半段「為戰俘而戰」的事實諱莫如深，韓戰更在美國成為「被遺忘的戰爭」。在中國大陸，抗美援朝戰爭雖然被頌揚，但戰爭後半段「為戰俘而戰」的實質卻被掩蓋。在台灣，國民黨政府曾高調紀念「反共義士」，但相關歷史記憶與書寫卻受到嚴格的控制與審查。 這次報告還將簡述三名重要戰俘的迥異經歷。一名從中央陸軍官校退學後加入遠征軍、後成為中國第一代傘兵並參與廣州受降的國軍少尉，他在淮海戰役（徐蚌會戰）被俘後脫逃，韓戰爆發後被徵召為司機，入朝後不久叛逃，成為反共戰俘領袖，最終到台灣。一名參加中共地下黨、退學搞革命的清華大學物理系學生，他在韓戰被俘後成為親共戰俘的主要翻譯；一名畢業於中央警官大學的貴州人，在韓戰戰場開小差，後成為反共戰俘領袖，但最終卻冒險犯難前往中立國，經印度抵達阿根廷。 這三個年輕人的生命軌跡在戰火中縱橫交錯，最後匯集在朝鮮半島的戰場上、戰俘營中。他們將如何在紛亂的歷史激流中抉擇、抗爭、或隨波逐流？ READ MORE...
Smuggling and State Power in Modern China
Zoom
Smuggling along the Chinese coast has long been a thorn in the side of many regimes. From opium concealed aboard steamships in the Qing dynasty to wristwatches trafficked in the People’s Republic, contests between state and smuggler have exerted a surprising but crucial influence on the political economy of modern China. Seeking to enforce trade regulations and protect critical revenues, successive governments from the late Qing through the early People’s Republic have violently cracked down on smuggling. Tighter regulations, higher taxes, and harsher enforcement all helped to consolidate domestic authority and confront foreign challenges. But these bold interventions did much more. They also sparked widespread defiance, triggering further coercive measures. Smuggling thus animated a paradoxical dynamic in China’s history: it simultaneously threatened state power while inviting repression that strengthened state authority. This lecture chronicles the history of smuggling in modern China by looking at its practice, suppression, and significance. It argues that the fight against smuggling was not simply a law enforcement problem but an impetus to expanding state capacity, broadcasting state authority, and transforming everyday life. Indeed, while smuggling might have operated on the margins of the law, it was far from marginal in remaking China. READ MORE...