Colloquium: Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism, State in China

Siegfried Kracauer once said that “The hotel lobby is the inverted symbol of the House of God.”  But is tourism really a substitute for ‘secular modernity’?  The current global rise of ‘spiritual tourism’ would perhaps suggest not.  Indeed, at least one scholar has famously conceived of tourism as nothing less than a ‘sacred spiritual journey.’  But is tourism, then, a modern substitute for spirituality?  Again, anyone observing vacationers in Venice or gamblers in Las Vegas might be hard pressed to make such a connection.  This talk will focus on exploring the relationship between tourism and religion, and will do so in the context of the concurrent rise of tourism and religious practice over the past several decades in China.  I will argue that the conundrums found in the tourism-religion relationship mirror a deeper epistemological dualism inherent in modernist thought, and that paying more attention to tourism as a social process and project of social ordering helps us see more clearly what is going on in China, an officially atheist state that has nevertheless been busy promoting religious tourism, though not always promoting it on purpose.

Speaker: Tim Oakes is Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  He is the author of Tourism and Modernity in China (1998), and has edited seven books, including Real Tourism: Practice, Care, and Politics in Contemporary Travel Culture (2011), Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism, and the State in China (2010), and Translocal China: Linkages, Identities, and the Reimagining of Space (2006).  He is currently working on a book about heritage tourism in China.

Time: 4:00-5:30

Location: Room CG 1008, Kelley School of Business, IU-Bloomington campus

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Colloquium: Updating the China Model: New Challenges for New Leaders

With new leaders about to come to power in China, the ruling Communist Party is also making significant changes to its development model, such as encouraging more domestic consumption instead of relying on exports, and building "national champions" instead of relying on the private sector. What challenges does the party face in this transition? What will be the political implications of these changes?

Speaker: Bruce Dickson is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University. His research and teaching focus on comparative politics, the political dynamics of authoritarian regimes, and the prospects for political change in China. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is the author of Wealth into Power: The Communist Party's Embrace of China's Private Sector (2008), and co-author of Allies of the State: China's Private Entrepreneurs and Democratic Change (2010).

Time: 4:00-5:30 pm

Location: Room CG 1008, Kelley School of Business, IU-Bloomington campus

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Colloquium: The Massification of Chinese Higher Education: Consequences for China's Youth

This talk analyzes the causes, consequences, and meanings of the sudden increase in the numbers of Chinese students receiving higher education. From a low of approximately 3% just two decades ago to almost 25% in 2006, higher education is no longer an elite and rare good, but is increasingly "massified." Such independent pursuit of limited opportunities has consequences for the nature of youth and the very meaning of childhood. Though the number of youth has been stabilizing because of China's birth policies, the competition for entry into the expanding programs of higher education remains fierce. Debates about education often reveal debates about human and social ideals. As Mao and others showed, the very nature of education has the effect of changing society. Chinese intellectuals knew this a century ago, as New Youth drove reform; the current situation is both similar and different in instructive ways. We find enduring centralization and increasing privatization; social and individual goals; and focus on international competition.

Speaker: Susan D. Blum is Professor and Chair in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, where she has also served as Director of the Center for Asian Studies. At Notre Dame she is also a Fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Institute for Educational Initiatives. Among her writings are Portraits of “Primitives”: Ordering Human Kinds in the Chinese Nation (2001), Lies that Bind: Chinese Truth, Other Truths (2007), and most recently My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture (2009). She is currently engaged in two projects: one is a book titled Learning versus Schooling: A Professor’s Reeducation and the other is a comparative study of higher education.

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Time: 4:00-5:30 pm

Location: Room CG 1008, Kelley School of Business, IU-Bloomington campus

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Colloquium: Friends with Benefits? Trends and Implications of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment in the United States

Developments in Chinese direct investment in the United States are poorly understood both by Americans and by Chinese. Even the simple rate of growth in these flows in not recognized. In the US, China's outward FDI is presumed to be an indication of government intentions, and a sign of strength. On the Chinese side, it is commonly believed that the US has the means and intention to keep Chinese investment out. Elsewhere in the world, it is suspected that Chinese firms will pass the US in preference for friendlier domiciles like Europe. All these assumptions are wrong and controvertible based on good arithmetic. While the quality of analysis on Chinese outbound investment is improving, the state of understanding of the implications remains primitive. A time of new insight and thinking lies just before us.

Speaker: Dan Rosen, Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, Founder and China Practice leader of the Rhodium Group (RHG), and Fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, and author of Behind the Open Door: Foreign Enterprises in the Chinese Marketplace (1998) and co-author of China's Energy Evolution: The Consequences of Powering Growth at Home and Abroad (forthcoming 2008, with Trevor Houser), Prospects for a US-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement (2004, with Nicholas Lardy), Roots of Competitiveness: China's Evolving Agriculture Interests (2004, with Scott Rozelle and Jikun Huang), and APEC and the New Economy (2002, with Catherine L. Mann).

Time: 4:00-5:30 pm

Location: State Room East, Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. 7th St., Bloomington, IN 47408

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Colloquium: Environmental, Economic, and Cultural Sustainability and China’s Ecological Migration Policy: Changing Society and Culture in Ejene District, Inner Mongolia

In China, there is an ongoing policy of forced migration based on the principle of environmental conservation. This is called “ecological migration” (生态移民, shengtai yimin in Chinese), and it has been roughly translated into English as the “forced relocation of people for preserving and/or restoring the ecological environment”. These policies also have the characteristic of being integrated conservation and development projects because they economically benefit local people who live in inconvenient circumstances on the grassland. The purpose is to relieve poverty due to desertification.

“Ecological migration” is directly rooted in the national interest and can be traced, in part, to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, awarded to that city in 2001. In 2000, 2001 and 2002 sandstorms frequently hit North China including Beijing. These sandstorms originated in Northwestern and Western China, mainly Inner Mongolia, where it is believed that severe desertification is in progress. This severe desertification of Inner Mongolia was identified as the origin of the sandstorms.

This talk will describe the reaction of the regional administration and the local people, and reveal the contradiction of ecological migration policies and the political structure using a case study of Ejene banner, Northwest China by first exploring the environmental problem and the ecological migration policy implemented in Ejene banner. The contradictions of the policy will then be discussed, focusing on the underlying attitude to pastoralism. Situations, problems, and reactions of the regional administration and the local people will be examined, followed by a consideration of the economic and political structure. In so doing, the changes to regional society and community will be considered as will, the importance of pastoralism for Mongolian culture and environmental conservation.

Speaker: Kanako Kodoma is Associate Professor at the Eurasian Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Letters, Chiba University, Japan. Her recent writings include the jointly edited An Oral History of Mothers in the Ejene Oasis, Inner Mongolia (Kyoto: SHOKADOH book sellers, forthcoming); “The groundwater resource crisis caused by ‘ecological migration’: Case studies of Mongolian pastoralists in Ejene Banner, Alasha League in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region” in Masayoshi Nakawo, Yuki Konagaya and Shinjilt (eds.), Ecological Migration: Environmental Policy in China (Peter Lang Pub Inc, 2011); “Dissecting the ideology of tree-planting campaigns; case based reconsideration of Japanese green volunteers in Inner Mongolia,” (in Chinese), (primary author), in Japanese Studies of Contemporary China 2009; “Settled Mongolian pastoralist’s strategy to combat desertification: A case study of Uushin banner, Inner Mongolia, China,” (in Japanese), in Nobuhiro Kishigami (eds.), Development and Indigenous people (Tokyo; Akashi Shoten Co., Ltd., 2009).

For her full biography, please click here:

Time: 4:00-5:30

Location: State Room East, Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. 7th St., Bloomington, IN 47408

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5th Annual CHINA Town Hall

Speakers: Professor Andrew Kipnis, who received his PhD from North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is a Senior Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change in the School of International, Political and Strategic Studies and School of Culture, History and Language in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor and current counselor and trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. 

China's rapid development and Sino-American relations have a direct impact on the lives of nearly everyone in the United States. CHINA Town Hall: Local Connections, National Reflections, is a national day of programming designed to provide Americans across the United States and beyond the opportunity to discuss these issues with leading experts.

Dr. Brzezinski’s remarks focusing on important issues in U.S.-Chinese relations will be delivered by webcast beginning at 7:00 p.m.  At 7:45, Professor Kipnis will deliver a talk entitled “Chinese Nation-Building as, instead of, and before Globalization” during which he will explore nation-building in China in an era of globalization.

This event is sponsored by the National Committee on United States-China Relations, the ANU-IU Pan Asia Institute, the IU East Asian Studies Center, and the Research Center for Chinese Politics and Business.

For additional information visit www.iub.edu/~panasia/events/cth  or http://www.ncuscr.org/programs/cth.

Time: 6:45-9:00 pm

Location: Georgian Room, Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. 7th St., Bloomington, IN  47408

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Colloquium: "New Challenges in Chinese Rural Governance"

Speaker: Dr. Jean Oi, William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics, Department of Political Science, Stanford University.

Time: 4:30-6:00 pm

Location: Georgian Room, 2nd Floor, Indiana Memorial Union 900 E. 7th Street, IU-Bloomington campus

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Notice: Dr. Oi will also participate in a roundtable discussion related to her current research, 2:00-3:30 pm, in Woodburn 218. The roundtable will discuss Dr. Oi's paper, "Shifting Fiscal Control to Limit Cadre Power in China's Towns and Villages," forthcoming in the China Quarterly (for a copy, please email Scott Kennedy at kennedys@indiana.edu). Students and faculty are welcome to attend this event.

Colloquium: "China's Troubled Rise: Bumps on the Road to Becoming a Superpower"

Speaker: John Pomfret, Diplomatic Correspondent for Asia, The Washington Post.

Time: 10:30-12:00 pm

Location: Room 4095, Kelley School of Business 801 W. Michigan St., IUPUI Campus, Indianapolis

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Colloquium: "China's Troubled Rise: Bumps on the Road to Becoming a Superpower"

Speaker: John Pomfret, Diplomatic Correspondent for Asia, The Washington Post.

Time: 5:00-6:30 pm

Location: Ernie Pyle Hall Room 220 940 E. 7th Street, IU‐Bloomington Campus

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Colloquium: “Playing Our Game: China, Industrial Development, and Political Change”

Speaker: Edward Steinfeld, Associate Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center’s China Energy Group, and author of Playing Our Game: Why China’s Rise Doesn’t Threaten the West (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Time: 4:00-5:30 pm

Location: Room CG 1034, Kelley School of Business, IU-Bloomington campus

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Colloquium: “Chinese Experiences – Crisis & Soft Landing”

Speaker: Wen Tiejun, Professor and Executive Director, Institute of Advanced Studies for Sustainability, Renmin University of China

Time: 12:30-2:00 pm

Location: IMU Dogwood Room, 900 E. 7th Street, IU‐Bloomington campus

Flyer will be available soon.

No RSVP necessary.

Symposium: “The East Asian Developmental State: Separating Fact from Fiction”

Speakers: Rick Doner, Emory University; Jeffrey Hart, IU Political Science; Heon Joo Jung, IU EALC; Gregory Kasza, IU EALC and Political Science; and Scott Kennedy, IU RCCPB, EALC and Political Science.

Time: 5:00-7:00 pm

Location: IMU Oak Room, Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. 7th St., IU-Bloomington campus

Co-sponsored with the East Asian Studies Center

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Colloquium: “‘Ethnic Conflicts’ or ‘Mass Incidents’? How to Understand the Ethnic Relations from a Holistic Perspective”

Speaker: Yang Zhongdong, Associate Professor, Xinjiang University School of Humanities

Time: 1:30-3:00 pm

Location: IMU Sassafras Room, 900 E. 7th Street, IU‐Bloomington campus

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Colloquium: “Is Rural China More Harmonious? Assessing Change in Five Counties, 2002-2010”

Speaker: Ethan Michelson, Associate Professor, Sociology, East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Law, Indiana University

Time: 12:00-1:30 pm

Location: Maurer School of Law, Room 335, 211 S. Indiana Ave., IU-Bloomington campus

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Colloquium: "Foreign Models and Institutional Change: A Study of China's Civil Service Reforms"

Speaker: Hongying Wang, Associate Professor of Political Science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University

Time: 4:00-5:30 pm

Location: Maple Room, Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. 7th St., IU-Bloomington campus

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Colloquium: “China’s Outward Foreign Direct Investment: New Trends and Opportunities”

Speakers: Presentation by Marjorie Lyles and Dan Li, IU Kelley School of Business, with commentary by Benjamin Shobert, Managing Director, Teleos, Inc.

Location: Oak Room, Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. 7th St., IU-Bloomington campus

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Colloquium: “Political Development in China: The Role of Civil Society”

Speaker: Chu Songyan, Professor of China National School of Administration and guest researcher at the Center for Civil Society Studies at Peking University

Location: Maple Room, Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. 7th Street, IU‐Bloomington Campus

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IU Research Center for Chinese Politics & Business
IU Center on Law, Society, and Culture

“The Chinese Worker after Socialism”
Professor William Hurst
University of Texas-Austin

Friday, November 21
4:00 p.m.
IU Law School Faculty Conference Room (#335)
(Light refreshments will be served.)

In this talk Professor Hurst provided an overview of his new book of the same title (available this coming March from Cambridge University Press). After three decades of reform, China acquired a commanding presence on the world stage. But there was another side to this great transformation. China's impressive gains brought significant social dislocation, in particular for groups that had been winners under socialism, but found themselves losers in the new post-socialist order. This talk, based on a forthcoming book, focused on one such group – laid-off state owned enterprise (SOE) workers – some of whom began to openly wonder, "with nothing to eat, can this still be called socialism?". Based on 21 months of field research in 9 Chinese cities and 300 in-depth interviews, the book explains: 1) how and why state sector lay-offs occurred; 2) what responses the state has taken and how they succeeded or failed in providing for workers' livelihoods and promoting re-employment; 3) the methods workers used to cope with their unemployment and their informal strategies for re-employment; and 4) patterns of workers' contention and state response.

Professor Hurst has been Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas-Austin since 2007, after completing his Ph.D. in Political Science at UC-Berkeley and a post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of Oxford. In addition to the book he introduced in this talk, Professor Hurst has also published several journal articles and an edited book on Chinese labor politics. He has a new research project on China's criminal justice system. Beyond his expertise on China, Professor Hurst also studies Indonesia.

For more information, visit the RCCPB's website: www.indiana.edu/~rccpb/ , or contact Ethan Michelson.

The RCCPB and the IU Center on Law, Society, and Culture co-hosted a talk by Professor Zhang Jing titled, "How Do People Define Justice in Transitional China?" Thursday, September 18, 4:00 p.m. in the IU Law School Faculty Conference Room (#335). How are popular definitions and perceptions of "justice" and "fairness" changing as China transforms from a planned economy to a market economy, and as the Chinese state abandons its ideological commitment to egalitarianism and legitimates inequality? In this talk, drawing from multiple sources of evidence, including in-depth interviews in six provinces, 53 basic-level court cases concerning civil property disputes, changing patterns of legal discourse in criminal court cases over the past thirty years, and the case of the liquidation of assets in a state-owned "collective" enterprise in Beijing, Professor Zhang summarized key findings from her ongoing research on rapidly changing popular conceptions of justice in China.

Professor Zhang is Professor of Sociology at Peking University, and a senior research fellow at the Peking University Center for Civil Society Studies. She is among a very small handful of social scientists in China conducting empirical sociolegal research. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research on civil society, legal mobilization, citizenship, and inequality in urban and rural China has been supported by the Ford Foundation and China's National Social Science Foundation. In 2003-4 she was a visiting scholar at Harvard University's Fairbank Center.For more information contact Ethan Michelson.

RCCPB Postdoctoral Fellow Junmin Wang gave a lecture entitled, "Horizontal Combination and Vertical Integration: Organizational Strategies of China's Tobacco Giant," on Friday, January 11, 12:00 noon - 1:30 pm, in the Oak Room of the Indiana Memorial Union. Drawing on extensive interviews and other primary source materials, Dr. Wang explained how some state-owned enterprises had managed to become highly successful in a highly competitive global market.

RCCPB Director Scott Kennedy and Visiting Scholar Deng Guosheng gave a lecture on business lobbying in China on Friday, December 7, 12:00-1:15 pm, in Ballantine Hall Room 004. Entitled, "Capitalists Lobbying in the Capital: Results from a Survey," the talk discussed the results from a survey concerning the lobbying strategies of large multinational and Chinese companies who engaged China's national government. The event was co-sponsored by the East Asian Studies Center.

Robert Kapp, former president of the US-China Business Council, gave two addresses on the Indianapolis and Bloomington campuses on Friday, September 7:

	"Will US-China Relations Survive an American Election Season?" 11:30 am -1:30 pm Lucheon Speech Ballroom, 1st Floor, University Place, 850 West Michigan Street, Indianapolis
	"Then and Now: Some Longer-Term Perspectives on Politics and Business in China Today" 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm Keynote Speech for RCCPB Inaugural Event Persimmon Room, Indiana Memorial Union, IU-Bloomington campus Free and open to the public

Robert Kapp is president of Robert A. Kapp & Associates, a consulting firm for companies pursuing business development with, and in, the People's Republic of China. From 1994-2004 he was president of the US-China Business Council, the leading business association representing American industry in China. Before his entry into the business community, Dr. Kapp (Ph.D., History, Yale University) taught Chinese history at Rice University and the University of Washington. Both events were co-sponsored by RCCPB and the IU Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER).