Professor Eva Pils (King's College London)

In Xi Jinping’s ‘New Era,’ the role and visibility of the Chinese Communist Party has been enhanced, while the role of law in limiting public power has been reduced. This seminar draws on examples from Professo Eva Pils engagement with human rights defence in and about China.

Dr Sarah Dauncey (University of Nottingham)

Who defines what it means to be ‘disabled’ in China today? In this talk, Sarah Dauncey looks at the construction of disabled identities specifically from the perspective of Chinese cultural epistemologies.

Kiu Tung Poon (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

This lecture recital will look at selected piano works by four contemporary Chinese composers, living away from the direct jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China in particular, to examine the sonic attributes that have been framed as “Chinese” and “Western,” as well as the language and strategies of musical syncretism that have been identified as an expression of their cultural identities in their compositions.

Lord Stephen Green

The next hundred years will bring more change than we can easily imagine: more opportunities for more people to achieve the fulfilment of a good life - and more risk of catastrophe and harm to the whole planet than we have ever known before. Asians in general - and perhaps China in particular - will play a leading role in all this.

Professor Wang Gungwu (National University of Singapore)

China Reconnects seeks to explain what China is doing and what its immediate and long-term interests are. It is not to defend or judge China. It does not employ theoretical frameworks that are not appropriate for describing Chinese conditions. It calls for understanding why history is particularly relevant to the Chinese state and most of its people. That way, we also see how the present and hopes for the future changes our perspectives of the past.

Dr Scott Pacey (University of Nottingham)

Mao’s rise had profound implications for inter-religious engagement in the People’s Republic of China (PRC); at the same time, the subsequent expansion of Christianity in Taiwan meant that to understand the history of Chinese Buddhist-Christian engagement, we must consider the Republic of China (ROC) as well.

Various speakers

This public event aims to show how China’s extensive repression of the Muslim population in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China connects to regional and global trends.

John Gittings (SOAS China Institute)

John Gittings reported from mainland China for The Guardian from the 1970s  until he retired in 2003 after setting up the paper’s first staff bureau in Shanghai.

Dr Jenny F. So (Harvard University and The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Dr. So’s lecture will focus on a few outstanding examples that best illustrate how close hands-on study of artifacts, coupled with nearly half a century of archaeological discoveries, can lead to a deeper appreciation of China’s oldest surviving artistic achievement.

Various speakers

Will China be able to sustain its economic rise? Will the economic miracle that has defined China’s development during the last four decades be a sufficient basis from which to lift it out of the Middle-Income Trap? Will the changes in the international environment unleashed by Xi’s assertive foreign policy and the US-China Trade War prove to be insurmountable obstacles? These are a few of the questions which this debate will address.