University of Nottingham Ningbo China
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China's past, China's present: Historical perspectives on recent events

Date(s)
14 March 2014 (14:00-15:30)
Description

The School of International Studies is pleased to invite you to a lecture presented by Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham. The speakers are China historians and writers who collaborated to update China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.

About the lecture

The talk takes a tour through Chinese history from the days of Confucius to the present, looking at how awareness of the past can help us make sense of China's often confusing present. In a presentation followed by questions and answers, Wasserstrom and Cunningham will give context to recent news, discussing among other issues: Why it matters that 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of World War I and the 120th anniversary of the First Sino-Japanese War; What's so important about Xi Jinping going for a walk; and how the Communist Party's call to end corruption echoes that made by Nationalist Party head Chiang Kai-shek back in the 1930s.

Speaker biographies

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chancellor's Professor of History at UC Irvine, has written four books about China and contributed reviews and commentaries to venues ranging from the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times to TIME and the Daily Beast.

Maura Elizabeth Cunningham, a freelance writer based in Shanghai and a doctoral candidate in History at UC Irvine, was the editor of the China Beat blog from 2010 through 2012 and has written for publications including Dissent, the TLS, and Time Asia.