On the Edge is highly interdisciplinary, fusing digital media, art history, literary criticism, and performance studies with citizenship, protest, and labor studies. It makes both the distinctive Chinese experience and the vital role of culture central to global understandings of how entrenched insecurity and civic jeopardy fray the bonds of the social contract. Examining the volatile […]
Join us on November 9th, for Decoding Chinese Elite Politics: a talk from the renowned scholar of elite Chinese politics, Joseph Torigian. Torigian is an assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC. In this talk, he will provide an overview of what outside observers have gotten right and wrong about Chinese […]
Jesse Appell came to China as a Fulbright scholar, apprenticing to Master Xiangsheng performer Ding Guangquan and becoming a mainstay of the Chinese comedy community. He has written and performed on Chinese comedy shows and has 2 million followers in China and almost 1 million abroad. Jesse will share some of his thoughts on the […]
News about the Chinese economy isn’t getting any better. The housing crisis is only getting worse, consumers don’t spend as the government hoped for, and exports are still sluggish. Furthermore, there seems to be no coherent strategy about how to solve the local government debt problem. On December 5 th rating agency Moody’s downgraded China’s […]
North Korean experts Chad O’Carroll and Colin Zeirko will help Club members understand what to expect for the Korean Peninsula in 2024 and calibrate the various different scenarios and hypotheses that have been advanced recently about the possibility of conflict. Chad O’Carroll is the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Korea Risk Group. He is […]
Online visibility has been increasingly weaponized to cause individuals' "social death" (unrepairable damage to one's reputation within a community/society) when perceived transgression or offense is committed. This trend is illustrated by the rising phenomenon of digital vigilantism and "cancel culture" across different cultural contexts. Focusing on Chinese empirical cases, Qian will present this topic based […]
In the talk, Olivia Cheung will present the main findings of The Political Thought of Xi Jinping, the new book she co-authored with Steve Tsang for Oxford University Press. She will offer a contextualized interpretation of the meaning of Xi’s major doctrines and concepts on the politics, economy, society, and foreign policy of China. It is […]
China’s growing electric vehicle dominance and overcapacity presents a challenge to the west. Governments are torn between profiting from the Chinese car market and protecting its domestic manufacturers. Join us for an in depth talk ahead of the Beijing Auto Show 2024 with automotive expert Beatrix Keim. About the Speaker: Beatrix Keim studied Sinology and […]
From May 5 to 10 Xi Jinping will visit Europe for the first time in 5 years. But the world - and China-EU relations in particular – have changed quite a bit since his last trip in 2019. Together with Abigaël Vasselier, we will unpack Xi’s upcoming visit: What plans does Xi have for Europe, […]
The fascinating, untold story of how the Chinese language overcame unparalleled challenges and revolutionized the world of computing. A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device? In The Chinese Computer, Thomas S. Mullaney sets out to […]
Switzerland will host a high-level conference on June 15-16 aimed at achieving peace in Ukraine. But Moscow has dismissed the initiative as a waste of time. And Beijing, which has strengthened its relationship with Russia, has said it will also not attend the summit. Together with the renowned expert Alexander Gabuev we will unpack the […]
China has ramped up its use of nationalistic consumer boycotts against other governments as well as foreign companies. In this talk, I discuss Beijing's mobilization of patriotic consumers as a form of informal coercion, allowing it to manage public sentiment for both domestic legitimacy and foreign policy goals. Patriotic consumer mobilization employs citizens as the […]
