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LUCC Events in 2019

Recordings of many past events are available on LUCC's YouTube channel.

To stay informed of all our upcoming events, please sign up to our mailing list at: china.centre@lancaster.ac.uk

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Tuesday, 10 December 2019, 3-5pm

China and North Korea's development and security nexus

Speaker: Catherine Jones, University of St. Andrews

Place: Bowland North SR 02

China's approach towards North Korea is often presented as being a paradox: on the one hand China has voted in favour of UN sanctions against the regime in Pyongyang and consistently condemned their development of a nuclear program and testing of missiles; on the other hand China is seen as not fully implementing the sanctions that it is endorsed. How then should or can we understand the policy position and work in harmony with China on this crucial issue? This paper presents the argument that by adopting the lens of the Chinese Peace (He Yin, Kuo) that is focused on development as a means towards peace China's position and approach is less contradictory and may be the last option available in managing the behaviour of the hermit kingdom.

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Thursday, 14 November 2019, 1-2pm

The EU’s tightening scrutiny on FDI from China and political risks for Chinese corporations

Speaker: Fanwei Kong, Visiting Scholar, Lancaster University China Centre

Place: The Roundhouse B02 - lunchtime briefing, sandwiches and refreshments served - PLEASE RSVP at http://bit.ly/32V8lKu

Rising Chinese investment in the European countries cause more and more concerns. Some member states of the EU even worried that Chinese firms would control more and more key technologies of local corporations and critical infrastructures in these countries through their Mergers and Acquisitions. Some European governments have established or updated their FDI screening regimes in 2017 and 2018. Meanwhile, an EU-level screening framework came into operation in this year. As a result, Chinese firms will be confronted with more political risks when they choose these member states as their investment destination.

Monday, 28 October 2019 12-1pm

Chinese public opinion's role in crisis diplomacy: preliminary findings from the field

Speaker: Andrew Chubb, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Lancaster University

Place: The Roundhouse B02 - lunchtime briefing, sandwiches and refreshments served

This talk presents preliminary findings on the question of the Chinese domestic public's role in international crisis diplomacy in East Asia. It is based on two field trips focused on interviews with foreign policy analysts in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, and Vietnam regarding the causes and effects of outpourings of nationalist sentiments in China during past international crises. This is first stage of a three-year British Academy-funded project aimed at better understanding crisis dynamics in the internet era.

9 July 2019 1:30-3:30pm (UK GST)

Panel 2A: Contemporary China in Transatlantic Relations

Organised by the Lancaster University China Centre

Chair: TBA

Astrid, Lancaster University, UK. "Will Trump make China great again? ‘America first’, Brexit, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative"

Jinghan Zeng, Lancaster University, UK. "Narrating China’s Belt and Road Initiative"

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8 July 2019 3:30-5pm (UK GST)

Plenary Roundtable: “Transatlantic Relations in the Age of a Rising China”

Place: Private Dining Room

Chair: Astrid Nordin, University of Lancaster, UK

Participants:

David Haglund, Queen’s University, Canada

Joe Renouard, Johns Hopkins University, Nanjing, China

Priscilla Roberts, City University of Macau, China

Jinghan Zeng, University of Lancaster, UK

Co-Hosted by the Lancaster University China Centre and the Confucius Institute

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14 May 2019 3-5pm (UK GST)

International influences on social policy in China

Speaker: Jane Duckett

Place: The Roundhouse B02

This TALK will explore the different ways that policy making in China has been explained: as a product of individual leaders preferences, factional in-fighting, rational problem-solving and bureaucratic bargaining. Taking the case of China’s rural cooperative medical schemes, the lecture will argue that international influences have been neglected and undertheorized. It will argue for an understanding of (social) policy making in China that takes into account the influence of international organizations, ideas and policy networks – and it will propose a new model of policy making, ‘network authoritarianism’.

11 May 2019 6:30-9:30pm (UK GST)

Our Vaginas, Ourselves

Place: George Fox Lecture Theatre 1

A Chinese Stage Play with English Subtitles by vaChina, followed by a discussion and question and answer session

Click here for more details of the performance and sign up through eventbrite

7 May 2019 3-4:30pm (UK GST)

Televising Chineseness

Speaker: Geng Song

Place: The Roundhouse B02

Click here for the details of the talk

02.04.2019, 15:00-17:00

Forever Frontier? Identity and Insecurity in Chinese Central Asia

Speaker: David Tobin

Place: Bowland North Seminar Room 21

China’s “Great Revival” (weida fuxing, 伟大复兴) tells a story of the Chinese people uniting and rising to reverse ‘national humiliation’ by the West and return to their pre-modern, rightful place at the centre of world affairs. However, while China’s leading thinkers euphorically celebrate the Great Revival on the global stage,they simultaneously construct anxious, nightmarish mirror-images that foretell China’s collapse if non-Han groups do not identify as Chinese ethnic minorities. Since outbreaks of ethnically targeted violence in Tibet and Xinjiang between 2008-2009, a shared national identity based on Han culture and ‘ethnic unity’ (minzu tuanjie, 民族团结), has been officially described as a “zero-sum political struggle of life or death” and prerequisite to China’s rise. Towards dreams of unity and revival, China has operated mass extra-judicial internment camps as “Education and Transformation Centres” since 2017 in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), interning approximately 10% of the adult Uyghur population. This state of exception in Xinjiang is a logical conclusion of official ethnocentric national narratives, analysed in this talk, which target Uyghur identities as obstacles to China’s revival. This talk focuses on the social and political dynamics that led to a shift in ethnic minorities policies towards a “fusion” (jiarong; 交融) model, culminating in mass extra-judicial internment camps and the “One-Belt-One-Road” foreign policy initiative to secure Chinese identity in Xinjiang. The talk draws from ethnographic fieldwork during the riots of 2009 and the latest official documents from the Xinjiang Working Group meetings. It argues that the CCP securitises an ethnocentric model of China and governs Xinjiang as a frontier, which provokes resistance to official policy and Chinese identity amongst Uyghurs based around tensions between inclusion and exclusion of minority identities.

Bio: Dr David Tobin is Hallsworth Research Fellow in the Political Economy of China at the University of Manchester. He is currently researching how postcolonial relations between China and the West shape foreign policymaking and ethnic politics in contemporary China. He is particularly interested in how "anti-hegemonism" in Chinese theories of world order drives the One-Belt-One-Road initiative and security policies in frontier regions. His forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press, Securing China's Northwestern Frontier: Identity and Insecurity in Xinjiang, analyses the relationship between identity and security in Chinese policy-making and ethnic relations between Han and Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Click here for the details of the talk

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