Cary Library will offer pre- and post-lecture discussion around the lecture focusing on Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s book, “China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know” from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 25.
This seminar will explore the challenges of getting a clear-eyed view of China at a time when it is going through rapid transformations, which have been leading to both admiring Sinomania and fearful Sinophobic reactions in the West. Is there anything “Communist” about the Chinese Communist Party these days? What are the biggest challenges facing the new leadership group, which took power at the end of 2012? Why is it misleading to think that Chinese intellectuals can be divided up neatly into just two groups — brave dissidents who risk imprisonment or exile, on the one hand, and those who loyally support the status quo on the other? How has the Internet changed and failed to change basic features of Chinese cultural and political life? These are the sorts of questions that will be explored, by an academic trained in Chinese history who often writes about the present, and frequently contributes to general interest publications, ranging from newspapers and magazines to blogs and online journals of opinion.
Facilitator Kathy Olmstead, editor and publisher of “Echoes”, a quarterly magazine about rural culture and writer of a biweekly column for Bangor Daily News, will lead a short discussion before the lecture. Afterwards, there will be a chance for those attending to discuss any questions or observations.
Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, where he also serves as the editor of the Journal of Asian Studies and holds a courtesy position in the Law School. He is the author of four books, including “China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford University Press, 2010, revised and updated edition 2013), and the editor or co-editor of several others, including “Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land,” which was published by the University of California Press in 2012. In addition to contributing to a range of scholarly periodicals, he has written commentaries and reviews for newspapers such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, as well as for the online or print editions of a wide variety of magazines.
He blogs regularly for the Huffington Post, co-founded the “China Beat” blog (a major source of information and opinion on China from 2008 through mid-2012), is co-editor of the Asia section of the Los Angeles Review of Books, and is an Associate Fellow of the Asia Society. He has given talks on China on four continents and has been a guest on radio programs such as NPR’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” and American Public Media’s “Marketplace.”
