About Global China Humanities Series 全球中國人文講座
The Center launches its inaugural Global China Humanities Lecture Series in February 2021. We invite internationally renowned scholars and young, first-book authors to discuss their latest works on topics ranging from Cold War history, diaspora studies, global medicine to literature.
香港科技大學全球中國中心舉辦全新的人文講座系列。我們邀請國際知名的學者、剛推出首本著作的年青學人來探討冷戰史、離散研究、全球醫療史、文學史等等課題。
每次講座先由講者演講50-60分鐘，隨後有30分鐘的問答時間。講座免費，公眾人士均可報名參與，惟必須先報名。講座將以中文或英文進行。
GLOBAL CHINA HUMANITIES SERIES: Rosy Fantasies: Edgar Snow, John Service, Joseph Stilwell, and their China
Dr.Lü Xun 呂迅 (Associate Research Fellow,Institute of Modern History,Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
1st March 2021 (Mon) 16:30 (HK)
Language: English
Please REGISTER HERE to secure your place
Abstract:
Edgar Snow, John S. Service, and Joseph W. Stilwell had overlapping and intertwined China experiences. They played unexpectedly pivotal roles in the rise of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Edgar Snow (1905-72) was a foreign correspondent in China from 1928 to 1941 and returned to the country in 1960, 1964-65, and 1970. He promulgated what was to later become prevailing imagery of the Chinese Communists as agrarian reformers. Born to an American missionary family in Chengdu, John S. Service (1909-99) served as a diplomat to China from 1933 to 1945 and revisited the country in 1971. Taking part in the Dixie Mission to Yan’an, Service emerged as Washington’s major source of information on the CCP. Old China Hand General Joseph W. Stilwell (1883-1946) was stationed in China in 1920-23, 1935-39 and 1942-44. He played a crucial role in changing American perceptions of the Chinese Communists and Chinese Nationalists. Snow, Service, and Stilwell all claimed to sincerely love the Chinese people. But what did they really think of China? This study will zoom in on their perceptions of China as expressed in their own words and deeds and explore how their perceptions impacted the course of history.
About the Speaker:
Lü Xun is Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He is the author of 大棋局中的國共關係Da qiju zhong de GuoGong guanxi [The Butterfly and the Dragonfly: From the Civil War to the Cold War, 1944-1950](Beijing: Sheke wenxian chubanshe, 2015). His recent publications include book chapters: “Wartime Collaborations in Rural North China,” in Chris Murray, ed., Unknown Conflicts of the Second World War: Forgotten Fronts (London and New York: Routledge, 2019); “The American Cold War in Hong Kong, 1949-60: Intelligence and Propaganda” in Priscilla Roberts and John Carroll, eds., Hong Kong in the Cold War (Hong Kong University Press, 2016); “Nationalism and Internationalism: Sino-American Racial Perceptions of the Korean War” in Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel, eds., Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Interactions, Nationalism, Gender and Lineage (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015).