A talk and book discussion with Arunabh Ghosh, Harvard University. Arunabh Ghosh is a historian of modern China, with research and teaching interests in social and economic history, history of science and statecraft, transnational history, and China-India history.

In his book Making it Count: Statistics and Statecraft in the early People's Republic of China (Princeton University Press, 2020), he investigates how Chinese officials used statistics to define a new society in the early years of the People’s Republic of China. Read more about his book and the event here. 

Conveners: Ravinder Kaur and Jørgen Delman
Discussant: Mikkel Bunkenborg

Over the last decade, the patterns of worker protests in China have changed significantly. Struggles for workers’ rights provided grounds for optimism regarding the collective empowerment of China’s working class. However, Xi Jinping’s ascendance to power in 2012 marked the beginning of a substantially more coercive governing approach towards labor activism that heavily undermines the conditions for continued self-organizing.

Based on his long-term fieldwork in China, Daniel Fuchs, a postdoc at the Department of Asian and African Studies at Humboldt University, provides insights into migrant labor unrest's current characteristics, situating them within the history of worker protests in reform China.

This event is the last lecture in the Current affairs in China series this spring semester. For further inquiries about the lecture series, please contact Julia Marinaccio at Julia.Marinaccio@uib.no.

In this guest lecture Alevtina Solovyeva looks at the case of the reinterpretation of the Chinese rituals of veneration to the ‘god of wealth’ (財神) in contemporary Mongolian culture. She shall introduce the figure(s) of the god of wealth, and its specific features and functions in the ritual mythology and everyday practices of Chinese communities. She shall also regard these features in the broader context of Chinese and Mongolian folk beliefs about the forms of the wealth and the supernatural ways it manifests. 

Time and date: 11:00 - 13:00 (CET), Thursday 22 April 2021
Please register for the event by contacting Dr. Kamilla Szczepanska (kamila.szczepanska@utu.fi).
Organizer: Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Finland

State-sponsored cyber attacks are on the rise. New serious challenges include cyber propaganda and manipulation of democratic processes. But what kind of cyber attacks does national security focus on? How may state-sponsored cyber-attacks be deterred? Are there avenues for possible future international cooperation? In this talk, Dr. Jun Osawa, will address these questions and themes related to the emergence of cyber threats in Northeast Asia, such as cyber espionage and ‘Made in China 2025’, North Korean cyber-attacks on financial institutions, and cyber manipulation. These emerging security threats will be tied to a discussion on the contest for digital world supremacy, especially between the United States and China. Read more about the event and the speaker here. 

Meet the author Carlos Sardiña Galache for a discussion about his book The Burmese Labyrinth (Verso 2020), in which he examines the deep roots behind the ethnic divisions that go back prior to the colonial period, and exploded in recent times. Using ethnographic and historical methods, the author gives an analysis of competing ethno-nationalisms and a nation in perpetual conflict with itself.

Read more about the event and the author here. 

Eve Zucker and Ben Kiernan introduce their new book, Political Violence in Southeast Asia since 1945: Cases from Six Counties. 

This anthology of 17 chapters examines waves of political violence that impacted six Southeast Asian countries – Indonesia, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam – from the wars of independence in the mid-twentieth century to America’s Indochina Wars to the recent Rohingya genocide. Despite the variety of cases, some surprising historical and thematic connections link them. In our era of global social and political transition, this volume offers an opportunity to consider the potential repercussions of current political and ideological positionings and policies. Enhancing our understanding of the technologies, techniques, motives, causes, consequences, and connections between violent episodes in Southeast Asia, the book raises key questions for the study of mass violence worldwide.

The talk will be facilitated by Duncan McCargo.