China Centre Newsletter Archive - Trinity Term 2013

China Centre Newsletter - Trinity Term 2013

Welcome to the China Centre Newsletter Trinity 2013 Edition.  The University of Oxford China Centre joins together academics from across the whole university, co-ordinating activities in all areas of study of China.  The University of Oxford China Centre plays a key role in the University's strategy to strengthen its relationship with China and other centres of scholarship in Chinese studies worldwide. The Centre advances the expertise of the University's outstanding academics by encouraging original research, publication, joint projects and collaboration with scholars and institutions in China, the UK and elsewhere.

NEWS UPDATE

Dickson Poon China Centre Building

Building work on the Dickson Poon China Centre Building in Canterbury Road, which is being undertaken by Galliford Try, started in October 2012, and is due for completion in March 2014.  The total cost of the building, designed by David Morley, is £21 million, to which the Hong Kong philanthropist, Dickson Poon, CBE, donated £10 million.  The building will be the home for academics drawn across a wide range of disciplines with research and teaching interests related to China. Those currently housed in the China Centre in Woodstock Road and in the Institute for Chinese Studies in Walton Street will move there during the summer of 2014. The building will provide a self-contained suite of student bedrooms (for St Hugh’s College), a 100 seat lecture theatre,  teaching rooms, offices for 40 staff and visitors, a dining area and a range of conference and seminar facilities. It will also contain a dedicated library and information centre with study carrels and a reading room, together with a new language laboratory. There will also be a striking Chinese garden. For updates on the building’s progress please visit http://www.st-hughs.ox.ac.uk/dickson-poon-building

The Centre, which will be the biggest in Europe, will report to the Humanities Division but will operate across the various divisions of the university.  Planning for the move, budgetary and administrative issues, and the legal agreement between St Hugh’s and the University, is being handled by a Working Party which includes representatives from the College, the Humanities and Social Sciences divisions, the Oriental Institute, the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, academics, Legal Services, Estates, Libraries, IT and the Development Office. Professor Rana Mitter will succeed Professor Andrew Goudie as Director of the China Centre in September 2013. The Centre will have its own Management Committee to advise the Director, and there will also be a distinguished Advisory Board.

 

NEW ACADEMIC VISITORS

Antonia Chao, Professor of Sociology, Tunghai University, Taiwan, has joined us until September 2013. Her areas of specialisation include: State power and nationalism; Diaspora and transnationalism; Migrants, immigrants and refugees; LGBT studies; Identity politics; Taiwan; China.

 

PAST EVENTS

  • Professor Xiaolan Fu was invited as the Pierce Visiting Scholar at Emory University, Atlanta, where she gave two public lectures on China's Interactions with the World Economy and its Role in Global Economic Recovery at the Halle Institute for Global Studies and the university's Oxford College campus.
  • Dr Reza Hasmath delivered the following lectures:

“Isomorphic Pressures, Epistemic Communities and State-NGO Collaboration in China”, University of Chicago (15 January), Harvard University (10 April), University of California at Los Angeles (11 April)

 “The Ethnic Penalty in the Labour Market? Prevalence, Causes and Policy Options”, Vrije University (26 February), University of Pennsylvania (19 March)

  • Professor Xiaolan Fu was interviewed by China Daily, People's Daily and Arise News on the China's interactions with the world economy, the impact of Chinese direct investment on host countries, especially Africa, and the challenges lie ahead in the new year.
  • Professor Xiaolan Fu spoke at the Opening Plenary of the 2013 Reading-UNCTAD International Business Conference in April on the role of multinational enterprises in development. She also spoke at Plenary Session of the UNCTAD Multi Year Inter-governmental Expert Meeting in Geneva on 'Building resilience to external shocks and mitigating their impact on trade and development'.

 

UPCOMING EVENTS

  • The Institute for Chinese Studies and the Contemporary China Studies Programme will be co-hosting weekly seminars in Trinity term.  These will be held in the ICS Room 207.
  • In May, Dr Dirk Meyer will co-organise a conference in Princeton on "The Classic of Documents" (Shangshu). This is the first of a series of conferences to be held in Oxford and Princeton on this topic. http://warpweftandway.com/2013/04/05/conference-the-classic-of-documents-and-the-origins-of-chinese-political-philosophy/
  • The Department of History of Art invites you to attend its ‘Chinese Painting and Its Audiences’ Lectures (previously given as the 61st Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 2012).

Professor Craig Clunas
Wks 1 & 2. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 5 pm
History of Art Department Lecture Theatre, 2nd Floor, Littlegate House, St Ebbes

Beginning and Ending in Chinese Painting                     Tues 23 Apr
             
The Gentleman                                                                       Wed 24 Apr
        
The Emperor                                                                           Thur 25 Apr
        
The Merchant                                                                         Tues 30 Apr 
         
The Nation                                                                              Wed 1 May   
       
The People                                                                              Thur 2 May   

 

China’s economy and society are changing rapidly, and policies have to keep up with these changes and look ahead to future changes. The transfer of leadership in China provides an opportunity to reassess existing policies and consider new policy options. This, the first of several planned China Policy Forums, examines five highly topical policy issues: technology and industrial upgrading policies; policies for financing social programmes; policies against poverty and inequality; policies for the ageing population; and the economic causes and cures of social instability. The Oxford China Policy Forum is co-organised by Professor John Knight of OXCEP and Professor Xiaolan Fu of the TMD Centre.

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

  • Dr Dirk Meyer has been awarded the following awards:

John Fell OUP Research Fund: Oxford-Princeton Partnership: international collaboration on ‘The Classic of Documents and the Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy’ (together with Professor Martin Kern, Princeton University). For more information, see here: http://www.humanities.ox.ac.uk/research/oxford-princeton_partnerships/2011-12

Astor Visiting Fellowship for bringing distinguished American scholars to Oxford. In this context, Professor Martin Kern (Princeton) spent a week at Oxford lecturing and working Oxford with research students

  • Professor Xiaolan Fu received a British Academy Award to research on The Role of Internationalisation on Technological Capability-Upgrading in Developing Countries. This is a joint project with Dr Jizhen Li and Dr Zhongjuan Sun of Tsinghua University.
  • Dr Dirk Meyer has established the interdisciplinary Workshop on Manuscript and Text Culture (WMTC) at Queen's. http://wmtc.queens.ox.ac.uk/  The interdisciplinary research group meets at least once per term. The aim of this workshop is to examine material aspects of writing and text production, as well as transmission and the interface between the oral and the written, across pre-modern literate societies. The paper of the HT workshop was given by Martin Kern, Princeton, with the title: "The “Jinteng” Chapter of the Shangshu and its Newly Discovered Manuscript Version from ca. 300 BCE: Comparison and Methodological Considerations"
  • The Technology and Management for Development Centre and two research centres of Tsinghua University will co-organise the 6th Academy of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (AIE) Annual Conference on 29-30 August in Oxford.  For more details please see http://www.tmd-oxford.org/content/aie-conference-2013-call-papers
  • ASEAN-Oxford Forum: Dr John Jenner of the Faculty of History, is directing a new Forum to disseminate Oxford research outputs to policymakers, business leaders, and security practitioners through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Meetings will be conducted every three months. Please contact John if you would like to present a paper to the Forum.

For further information, see the main University website.

 

 PUBLICATIONS

  • Dr Linda Yueh’s latest book ‘China's Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower’, has been published by OUP.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chinas-Growth-Making-Economic-Superpower/dp/0199205787/ref=br_lf_m_1000617423_4_89_ttl?ie=UTF8&s=books&pf_rd_p=376529807&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_i=1000617423&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=1D40JVMS82V1XK4W7D28

  • Dr. Jenner contributed a chapter to Diplomats at War: The American Experience, editors Stewart, A. and Rofe, J. S. (Dordrecht, 2013); published a review article on East Asia's Christianities in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 64:1 (January 2013); conducted an extensive interview for an international ABC-BBC documentary series on the Second World War; and was interviewed by the BBC World Service, Vietnam News Agency, and other international media organisations regarding the inaugural ASEAN-Oxford Forum.
  • Dr Reza Hasmath has recently had the following published:

The Chinese Corporatist State: Adaptation, Survival and Resistance. New York and Oxford, UK: Routledge (with J. Hsu). Available at: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415640725/

“Deterring the ‘Boat People’: Explaining the Australian Government's People Swap Response to Asylum Seekers”, University of Oxford Centre on Migration, Policy and Society Working Paper 13-103 (with J. McKenzie). Available at: http://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/files/Publications/working_papers/WP_2013/WP13103_Hasmath.pdf

“Ethnic Minority Disadvantages in China’s Labour Market?”, University of Oxford China Growth Centre Discussion Paper 16 (with B. Ho and E. Liu).  Available at: http://www.seh.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/DP16.pdf