Konfuzius-Institut Düsseldorf
China and Globalization: Past, Present, and Future
Jeffrey Wasserstrom
This illustrated talk will look at the ways that China has alternately become increasingly enmeshed in and stood apart from broad international trends over the past two centuries. Some topics addressed will include China's role as a participant in and host of grand spectacles, including World's Fairs and Olympic Games; high profile meetings between Chinese and foreign leaders, from Ulysses S. Grant's with Li Hongzhang in Beijing in 1879 to Xi Jinping's state visits to Washington and London; and the roles that "global cities" have played in different periods as contributors to and symbols of globalization. The speaker will argue that there are flaws with the way the topic is handled in both some well known books on China (such as Henry Kissinger's On China) and some well known books on globalization (such as Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat)--all of which have sold briskly in the PRC as well as the West. He will offer an alternative perspective to the ones presented in those works.
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a specialist in Modern Chinese History with a strong interest in connecting China's past to its present and placing both into global perspective. He is Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine. He has written many books, including “Global Shanghai, 1850-2010” (2008), “China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know” (2010 and 2013) and “Eight Juxtapositions: China through Imperfect Analogies from Mark Twain to Manchukuo” (Penguin 2016). He has edited or co-edited several others, including, most recently, “The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China” (2016). In addition to writing for academic journals, he has contributed to many general interest venues, among them the New York Times, the TLS, and the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB).
Der Vortrag wird in englischer Sprache gehalten.