Podcast appearances and mentions of michael szonyi

Host Jeremy Hitchcock sits down with Jennifer Rudolph, a Professor of Asian History and International and Global Studies and Director of the East Asia Hub at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). She received her degrees from the University of Washington and the University of Chicago and is a former executive director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the Harvard China Fund (Harvard University). Her research interests include Chinese political history, US-China relations, identity formation, and the geopolitics of Taiwan. Her most recent books are The China Questions 2: Critical Insights into US-China Relations (with Maria Adele Carrai and Michael Szonyi, Harvard, 2022), which just received an honorable mention for the Franklin Buchanan Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, and The China Questions: Critical Insights into a Rising Power (with Michael Szonyi, Harvard 2018). She also wrote Negotiated Power in Late Imperial China: The Zongli Yamen and the Politics of Reform (Cornell East Asia Series, 2008). She is a long-term Research Associate at the Fairbank Center and a founding member of the Urban China Research Network, serving on its board for six years. With five US Department of Education and Department of Defense grants, she has led the East Asia initiative for science, engineering, and business students at WPI. Dr. Rudolph has held numerous fellowships, including a Fulbright Hays for doctoral research in Taiwan.

What does it mean to be a meritocracy? Ask an ordinary person, and they would likely say it means promoting the best and brightest in today's society based on merit. But that simple explanation belies many thorny questions. What is merit? How do we measure talent? How does equality come into play? And how do we ensure that meritocracies don't degenerate into the same old privileged systems they strived to replace? Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi write in their edited volume Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford UP, 2022) that “Few public policy issues generate as much analysis or rouse as much emotion as the question of how to make society more meritocratic,” Tarun, Michael, and their fellow contributors try to define, study, and interrogate the idea of meritocracy with reference to two countries in particular: India, and China. In this interview, Tarun, Michael and I talk about meritocracy, why they chose Asia as their focus, and why it's important to understand how this idea is implemented in practice. Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and the first director of Harvard's Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. Michael Szonyi is Frank Wu Professor of Chinese History and former Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. (A quick editorial note! Tarun unfortunately had to leave slightly early in our interview, meaning he's not present in the outro!) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Making Meritocracy. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

What does it mean to be a meritocracy? Ask an ordinary person, and they would likely say it means promoting the best and brightest in today's society based on merit. But that simple explanation belies many thorny questions. What is merit? How do we measure talent? How does equality come into play? And how do we ensure that meritocracies don't degenerate into the same old privileged systems they strived to replace? Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi write in their edited volume Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford UP, 2022) that “Few public policy issues generate as much analysis or rouse as much emotion as the question of how to make society more meritocratic,” Tarun, Michael, and their fellow contributors try to define, study, and interrogate the idea of meritocracy with reference to two countries in particular: India, and China. In this interview, Tarun, Michael and I talk about meritocracy, why they chose Asia as their focus, and why it's important to understand how this idea is implemented in practice. Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and the first director of Harvard's Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. Michael Szonyi is Frank Wu Professor of Chinese History and former Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. (A quick editorial note! Tarun unfortunately had to leave slightly early in our interview, meaning he's not present in the outro!) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Making Meritocracy. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

What does it mean to be a meritocracy? Ask an ordinary person, and they would likely say it means promoting the best and brightest in today's society based on merit. But that simple explanation belies many thorny questions. What is merit? How do we measure talent? How does equality come into play? And how do we ensure that meritocracies don't degenerate into the same old privileged systems they strived to replace? Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi write in their edited volume Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford UP, 2022) that “Few public policy issues generate as much analysis or rouse as much emotion as the question of how to make society more meritocratic,” Tarun, Michael, and their fellow contributors try to define, study, and interrogate the idea of meritocracy with reference to two countries in particular: India, and China. In this interview, Tarun, Michael and I talk about meritocracy, why they chose Asia as their focus, and why it's important to understand how this idea is implemented in practice. Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and the first director of Harvard's Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. Michael Szonyi is Frank Wu Professor of Chinese History and former Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. (A quick editorial note! Tarun unfortunately had to leave slightly early in our interview, meaning he's not present in the outro!) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Making Meritocracy. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

What does it mean to be a meritocracy? Ask an ordinary person, and they would likely say it means promoting the best and brightest in today's society based on merit. But that simple explanation belies many thorny questions. What is merit? How do we measure talent? How does equality come into play? And how do we ensure that meritocracies don't degenerate into the same old privileged systems they strived to replace? Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi write in their edited volume Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford UP, 2022) that “Few public policy issues generate as much analysis or rouse as much emotion as the question of how to make society more meritocratic,” Tarun, Michael, and their fellow contributors try to define, study, and interrogate the idea of meritocracy with reference to two countries in particular: India, and China. In this interview, Tarun, Michael and I talk about meritocracy, why they chose Asia as their focus, and why it's important to understand how this idea is implemented in practice. Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and the first director of Harvard's Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. Michael Szonyi is Frank Wu Professor of Chinese History and former Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. (A quick editorial note! Tarun unfortunately had to leave slightly early in our interview, meaning he's not present in the outro!) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Making Meritocracy. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

What does it mean to be a meritocracy? Ask an ordinary person, and they would likely say it means promoting the best and brightest in today's society based on merit. But that simple explanation belies many thorny questions. What is merit? How do we measure talent? How does equality come into play? And how do we ensure that meritocracies don't degenerate into the same old privileged systems they strived to replace? Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi write in their edited volume Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford UP, 2022) that “Few public policy issues generate as much analysis or rouse as much emotion as the question of how to make society more meritocratic,” Tarun, Michael, and their fellow contributors try to define, study, and interrogate the idea of meritocracy with reference to two countries in particular: India, and China. In this interview, Tarun, Michael and I talk about meritocracy, why they chose Asia as their focus, and why it's important to understand how this idea is implemented in practice. Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and the first director of Harvard's Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. Michael Szonyi is Frank Wu Professor of Chinese History and former Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. (A quick editorial note! Tarun unfortunately had to leave slightly early in our interview, meaning he's not present in the outro!) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Making Meritocracy. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

What does it mean to be a meritocracy? Ask an ordinary person, and they would likely say it means promoting the best and brightest in today's society based on merit. But that simple explanation belies many thorny questions. What is merit? How do we measure talent? How does equality come into play? And how do we ensure that meritocracies don't degenerate into the same old privileged systems they strived to replace? Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi write in their edited volume Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford UP, 2022) that “Few public policy issues generate as much analysis or rouse as much emotion as the question of how to make society more meritocratic,” Tarun, Michael, and their fellow contributors try to define, study, and interrogate the idea of meritocracy with reference to two countries in particular: India, and China. In this interview, Tarun, Michael and I talk about meritocracy, why they chose Asia as their focus, and why it's important to understand how this idea is implemented in practice. Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and the first director of Harvard's Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. Michael Szonyi is Frank Wu Professor of Chinese History and former Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. (A quick editorial note! Tarun unfortunately had to leave slightly early in our interview, meaning he's not present in the outro!) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Making Meritocracy. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

What does it mean to be a meritocracy? Ask an ordinary person, and they would likely say it means promoting the best and brightest in today's society based on merit. But that simple explanation belies many thorny questions. What is merit? How do we measure talent? How does equality come into play? And how do we ensure that meritocracies don't degenerate into the same old privileged systems they strived to replace? Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi write in their edited volume Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford UP, 2022) that “Few public policy issues generate as much analysis or rouse as much emotion as the question of how to make society more meritocratic,” Tarun, Michael, and their fellow contributors try to define, study, and interrogate the idea of meritocracy with reference to two countries in particular: India, and China. In this interview, Tarun, Michael and I talk about meritocracy, why they chose Asia as their focus, and why it's important to understand how this idea is implemented in practice. Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and the first director of Harvard's Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. Michael Szonyi is Frank Wu Professor of Chinese History and former Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. (A quick editorial note! Tarun unfortunately had to leave slightly early in our interview, meaning he's not present in the outro!) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Making Meritocracy. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

What does it mean to be a meritocracy? Ask an ordinary person, and they would likely say it means promoting the best and brightest in today's society based on merit. But that simple explanation belies many thorny questions. What is merit? How do we measure talent? How does equality come into play? And how do we ensure that meritocracies don't degenerate into the same old privileged systems they strived to replace? Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi write in their edited volume Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford UP, 2022) that “Few public policy issues generate as much analysis or rouse as much emotion as the question of how to make society more meritocratic,” Tarun, Michael, and their fellow contributors try to define, study, and interrogate the idea of meritocracy with reference to two countries in particular: India, and China. In this interview, Tarun, Michael and I talk about meritocracy, why they chose Asia as their focus, and why it's important to understand how this idea is implemented in practice. Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and the first director of Harvard's Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. Michael Szonyi is Frank Wu Professor of Chinese History and former Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. (A quick editorial note! Tarun unfortunately had to leave slightly early in our interview, meaning he's not present in the outro!) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Making Meritocracy. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon.

For decades Americans have described China as a rising power. That description no longer fits: China has already risen. What does this mean for the U.S.-China relationship, for the global economy, and for international security? Covering security, economics, military development, climate change, public health, science and technology, education, and Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Xinjiang, the essays in The China Questions 2 look at key sites of friction and potential areas for collaboration. In an interview conducted on September 21, 2022, China Questions 2 co-editors Maria Adele Carrai and Michael Szonyi argue that we are not facing Cold War 2.0, but rather a complex mix of conflict, competition, and cooperation that must be understood in the domestic realities of the United States and China, as well as the international context. 0:00-2:51 Introduction 2:51-10 Key questions and accessibility  10:00-15:13 Chinese constructive engagement  15:13-20:12 U.S. economic involvement and revisionist powers 20:13-24:07 Has constructive engagement failed? 24:07-36:11The China Questions 2 About the speakers:  https://www.ncuscr.org/event/china-questions-2/ Follow Maria Adele Carrai on Twitter: @adele_carrai Follow Michael Szonyi on Twitter: @MichaelSzonyi Subscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).  

In our very first episode, Greg talks about some aspects of his research on the growing role of Chinese merchants in the East Asian sea trade between the 10th to 12th centuries. Diplomacy from the 7th to 9th centuries was dominated by official embassies that neighboring states dispatched to the Sui-Tang courts, but after the fall of the Tang dynasty in the early 10th century, private merchants from southeastern China began to dominate the maritime trading routes to Japan, Korean, and Southeast Asia. Greg shares with us some information about why that came to be, where these merchants came from, where they show up in the textual records, and some of the implications that this had for Sino-Japanese relations. We apologize for some of the audio quality in this episode. We are just starting out and we are working to improve our audio quality! Contributors: Greg Sattler Gregory Sattler is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on sea merchants in East Asia from the ninth to thirteenth centuries, with a particular consideration of their place in society, their trade networks, and their relationships with government officials. Gregory has recently published an article titled “The Ideological Underpinnings of Private Trade in East Asia, ca. 800–1127” (Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University 6) and he is currently working on two additional manuscripts. He has received degrees in Taiwan and Japan, and is a proficient speaker of both Chinese and Japanese. Yiming Ha Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Credits Episode No. 1 Release date: October 31, 2021 Recording location: Los Angeles, CA Transcript Bibliography courtesy of Greg Tōjin sōbetsushi narabini sekitoku 唐人送別詩幷尺牘  (Chinese Farewell Poems and Writings). From the Onjō-ji collections 園城寺蔵, currently held in the Nara National Museum 奈良国立博物館.  Image Source Select Bibliography  Ennin 円仁. Ennin's Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law. Trans. Edwin O. Reischauer. New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1955.   Reischauer, Edwin O. Ennin's Travels in T'ang China. New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1955.   Sattler, Gregory. “The Ideological Underpinnings of Private Trade in East Asia, ca. 800–1127.” Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University 6 (2021), pp. 41–60.   Tackett, Nicolas. “A Tang–Song Turning Point.” In A Companion to Chinese History, ed. Michael Szonyi, pp. 118­–28. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2017.   Yamauchi Shinji 山内晋次. Nara Heian ki no Nihon to Ajia 奈良平安期の日本とアジア [Japan and Asia during the Nara and Hei'an Periods]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2003.  

The National Committee held a virtual program on February 10, 2021 with Dr. Graham Allison, Dr. Thomas Gold, Ms. Melinda Liu, and Dr. Michael Szonyi to celebrate and remember teacher/mentor/public servant/friend Professor Ezra Vogel.

Join Ben Lima for a conversation on the topics of imperial and modern China with Michael Szonyi. Click here to learn more about Michael Szonyi  Recorded and Edited by Andrew Oh

At the heart of Michael Szonyi’s new book are two questions: 1) How did ordinary people in the Ming deal with their obligations to provide manpower to the army?, and 2) What were the broader consequences of their behavior?” The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China (Princeton University Press, 2017) considers how military institutions shaped the lives of ordinary people on China’s southeast coast under the Ming dynasty. It tells the stories of ordinary families navigating state institutions and forming and reforming all sorts of social relations in the process. It shows that there were particular strategies, practices, and discourses used by ordinary people in creative and ingenious ways to deal with and create opportunities from challenges posed by the Ming state, and it ultimately argues that this pattern of political interaction was not unique to soldiers or to the Ming. In the process, Szonyi’s book offers a thoughtful series of reflections on the sources of Ming history (and beyond!) and a model for learning to listen to the voices of the past in order to inform how we understand and live our lives today. Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the heart of Michael Szonyi’s new book are two questions: 1) How did ordinary people in the Ming deal with their obligations to provide manpower to the army?, and 2) What were the broader consequences of their behavior?” The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China...

At the heart of Michael Szonyi’s new book are two questions: 1) How did ordinary people in the Ming deal with their obligations to provide manpower to the army?, and 2) What were the broader consequences of their behavior?” The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the heart of Michael Szonyi’s new book are two questions: 1) How did ordinary people in the Ming deal with their obligations to provide manpower to the army?, and 2) What were the broader consequences of their behavior?” The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China (Princeton University Press, 2017) considers how military institutions shaped the lives of ordinary people on China’s southeast coast under the Ming dynasty. It tells the stories of ordinary families navigating state institutions and forming and reforming all sorts of social relations in the process. It shows that there were particular strategies, practices, and discourses used by ordinary people in creative and ingenious ways to deal with and create opportunities from challenges posed by the Ming state, and it ultimately argues that this pattern of political interaction was not unique to soldiers or to the Ming. In the process, Szonyi’s book offers a thoughtful series of reflections on the sources of Ming history (and beyond!) and a model for learning to listen to the voices of the past in order to inform how we understand and live our lives today. Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the heart of Michael Szonyi’s new book are two questions: 1) How did ordinary people in the Ming deal with their obligations to provide manpower to the army?, and 2) What were the broader consequences of their behavior?” The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China... Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard Kennedy School, asks how America and China can escape future conflict. Discussed by Roderick MacFarquhar,  Leroy B. Williams Professor of History at Harvard University, and Oriana Skylar Mastro, Assistant Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Chaired by Michael Szonyi, Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University,

  “We hear, in the media and in comments by politicians, a lot of very glib statements that oversimplify China, that suggest all of China is one thing or one way,” says Michael Szonyi, a professor of Chinese history and director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. China, of course, is as complicated as — if not more complicated than — any other country, and misunderstandings about it among Americans are both common and consequential. The relationship with China is “arguably — in anyone’s estimation — the most important bilateral relationship that the U.S. has,” says Jennifer Rudolph, a professor of modern Chinese political history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Jennifer and Michael edited a book to address 36 questions that ordinary people, especially Americans, ask about China. The book is titled The China Questions: Critical Insights Into a Rising Power, and it draws on the expertise of the Fairbank Center and prompts these accomplished academics to write 2,000-word essays for a general audience that they typically never aim to reach. View the entire list of questions on the Harvard University Press website. A sampling: “Is the Chinese Communist Regime Legitimate?” (by Elizabeth J. Perry) “Is There Environmental Awareness in China?” (by Karen Thornber) “Will China Lead Asia?” (by Odd Arne Westad) “What Does the Rise of China Mean for the United States?” (by Robert S. Ross) “Can China and Japan Ever Get Along?” (by Ezra F. Vogel) “Will Urbanization Save the Chinese Economy or Destroy It?” (by Meg Rithmire) “Why Does the End of the One-Child Policy Matter?” (by Susan Greenhalgh) “Why Do Classic Chinese Novels Matter?” (by Wai-yee Li) Recommendations: Jeremy: Drawn Together: The Collected Works of R. and A. Crumb, by Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb. The husband-and-wife pair became known for their funny, vulgar comics in the late 1970s, though Robert’s zany work goes back a decade earlier. Jennifer: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo. A work of creative nonfiction about a young boy and his family, and how the system is stacked against them. Michael: The Fairbank Center website, which features a blog and a podcast. Also, Michael’s new book, titled The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China. And The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World, by Greg Grandin. Kaiser: The North Water: A Novel, by Ian McGuire. A dramatic tale that includes whaling, murder, and brutality, and whose overall flavor Kaiser describes as Joseph Conrad meets Cormac McCarthy meets Herman Melville meets Jack London.

Yukon Huang thinks that China’s economy is extremely unconventional. Unsurprisingly, then, that nearly all the conventional economic wisdom we hear about this economy — particularly the two hugely popular poles of opinion that treat it as either an unstoppable force or a crisis-in-waiting — is wrong. So goes the contrarian take of the former World Bank Director for China and Russia, who is now Senior Fellow in the Asia Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Huang detailed his thoughts on China’s economy is his most recent book, Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom Is Wrong. http://supchina.com/2017/10/24/cracking-the-china-conundrum-makes-bold-claims/ He sat down with Jeremy and Kaiser at SupChina’s NEXT CHINA Conference on January 17, and in this live podcast, answered provocative questions and defended surprising statements:  "Why is it that people think China's unbalanced growth is a risk, when it actually is a positive development?" "Why do people think [China] has a debt problem, when actually it's a sign of financial deepening?" "Why is it that corruption is seen as an impediment to growth, when in China actually it's been a booster to growth?" "We assume that the more innovative you are as a country, the faster you grow, when actually it's the opposite." Recommendations: Jeremy: The China Questions: Critical Insights into a Rising Power, a fantastic collection of essays by scholars at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, edited by Jennifer Rudolph and Michael Szonyi. And radiooooo.com, a site you should definitely check out if you are a music lover. Yukon: The recent movie Hidden Figures, about black women mathematicians who worked for NASA in the 1960s. Kaiser: A two-part documentary on Channel NewsAsia called China on Film, a collection of the earliest footage ever shot in China, dating back to the last years of the Qing Dynasty.  

As President Trump returns from his first visit to China as Commander-in-Chief, how is U.S. foreign policy reacting to a new administration in Washington and a new rising power in Beijing? The Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation present Ambassador and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Nicholas Burns, in conversation with Jeeyang Rhee Baum, Ezra Vogel, and Odd Arne Westad, moderated by Michael Szonyi. Speaker: Ambassador (Ret.) Nicholas Burns, Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, Harvard Kennedy School; Former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Discussants: Ezra Vogel, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus, Harvard University Odd Arne Westad, S.T. Lee Professor of U.S.-Asia Relations, Harvard Kennedy School Jeeyang Rhee Baum, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School Moderator: Michael Szonyi, Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Professor of Chinese History This event was sponsored by Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance, and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies presents a panel discussion to celebrate the launch of our world-debut exhibition of Cultural Revolution-era artworks. This is the first time that these works, including "dazibao" (or “big-character posters”), have been publicly displayed since the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Panelists: Denise Ho, Assistant Professor of History, Yale University Jie Li, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University Roderick MacFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Research Professor of History and Political Science, Emeritus, Harvard University Julia Murray, Professor of Art History, Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison Xiaofei Tian, Professor of Chinese Literature, Harvard University Moderated by Michael Szonyi, Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Professor of Chinese History, Harvard University Read blog posts by our panelists on dazibao and Cultural Revolution-era artworks on the Fairbank Center Blog: Part 1: Reading “Big-Character Posters”: https://medium.com/fairbank-center/exhibiting-the-cultural-revolution-part-1-reading-big-character-posters-d3edd7bb0104 Part 2: The Visual Spectacle of “Dazibao”: https://medium.com/fairbank-center/exhibiting-the-cultural-revolution-part-2-the-visual-spectacle-of-dazibao-7a61d5ba684b Part 3: Dazibao Exhibitionism: https://medium.com/fairbank-center/exhibiting-the-cultural-revolution-part-3-dazibao-exhibitionism-3855a62a8bc6 Part 4: Pictorial Posters: https://medium.com/fairbank-center/exhibiting-the-cultural-revolution-part-4-pictoral-posters-4475daf92185

In April 1992, China implemented a law that, for the first time, allowed families from other countries to adopt Chinese children. Since then, around 120,000 Chinese have been adopted abroad, with 80,000 finding a home in the United States. But when adoptions started in that first year, only 206 came to America. Rae Winborn is one of that first wave of adoptees, brought over at just nine months old to the U.S. to grow up with a white, middle-class American family in Durango, Colorado. Charlotte Cotter was adopted a few years later at the age of five months in 1995, and grew up with two moms in Newton, Massachusetts. She is now the president of China’s Children International, a support and networking organization run by and for Chinese adoptees around the world, which she co-founded in 2011. Kaiser and Jeremy had a conversation with Rae and Charlotte about their experiences growing up in America, why they both chose to learn Chinese and spend time working in China — which Rae described as the “Chinese-American experience on steroids” — and what it was like when Charlotte made contact with her birth family. Recommendations: Jeremy: Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve, an excellent book on education by Lenora Chu. Also, The China Questions: Critical Insights Into a Rising Power, by Jennifer Rudolph and Michael Szonyi. Rae: italki, a private tutoring service for language learning where you can get Skype lessons to improve your Chinese. Charlotte: Somewhere Between, a documentary of Chinese adoptees in America by Linda Goldstein Knowlton, and Twinsters, a movie about two Korean twins separated at birth and raised separately in America and France. Kaiser: The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection, a book written by Yingyu Zhang and translated by Christopher G. Rea and Bruce Rusk, which describes the incredibly clever ways in which people cheated one another in 17th-century China.

March 26, 2009 | Over the course of the last half-century, evidence from China has been used first to support and later to confound simplistic arguments about the decline of religion in the face of modernity. Without launching a defense of secularization theory in general, Dr. Michael Szonyi argued that there is something to be gained from situating scholarship on Chinese religion in relation to recent debates in the theory. He suggested on the one hand that secularization theory can be a useful tool in understanding the modern history of religions in China and on the other that thinking about what secularization has meant in China is crucial to a comparative global history of religion and modernity. He also argued that attention to the course of secularization both as a historical process and as a political ideology may help us better understand the religious policies of the People's Republic of China today.