Speaker: Kaiser Kuo
Founding Member of Tang Dynasty,
China’s First Heavy Metal Band
Co-Host, Sinica Podcast
University of Arizona Alumnus

Against the backdrop of a brewing Cold War, one of the major drivers of American anxiety over China is China’s apparent prowess in technology. The terms of this anxiety are rooted not in low-end manufacturing of steel or in aluminum overcapacity but rather in technology. China’s rise as a tech power challenges one of the sturdier bastions of American exceptionalism – the notion that one cannot be innovative without free flows of information. Reporting on “techno-authoritarianism” – some of it grounded in reality and some of it rather fanciful – conforms to this trend. The Trump Administration’s focus on China’s industrial policy, and especially on “Made in China 2025,” illustrates how much tech has come to be the crux of this new rivalry. This talk will explore the social and cultural matrix in which technology is created and consumed in China and contrast it with its counterpart in the United States, as well as explore what China’s optimistic and often cavalier attitude toward technology means for the U.S.-China relationship.

Questions? Contact: Joshua Schlachet at jschlachet@email.arizona.edu
or visit eas.arizona.edu

Seventeen years ago when the 9/11 tragedy occurred, some hardliners in the leadership of the PRC regarded this event as a strategic opportunity for China: a weakened USA trapped in a confrontation with the forces of radical Islam would be in the national interest for Communist China’s survival. However, not long after, China faces the same problem: the danger coming from Islamic extremism and international terrorism. The growth of Islam in China after the 1980s has impacted the domestic and foreign policies of the PRC government. Amidst an intensified trade war and competition between the two largest economic powers in the world, this talk will explore this complicated triangular relationship at this critical present moment.

Professor Jianping Wang is an emeritus professor of Philosophy and Religion at Shanghai Normal University and is a visiting research scholar at Harvard University.

John L. Holden is President and CEO of the US-China Strong Foundation, an NGO dedicated to strengthening American capacity to understand China. Prior to joining US-China Strong, Holden was Associate Dean at Peking University and Professor of Management Practice at the Guanghua School of Management. A veteran China expert, Mr. Holden was President of the National Committee on US-China Relations from 1998 to 2005. In 2017 he received the PRC’s highest honor for a foreigner, its “Friendship Award.” Mr. Holden has served as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the American Chamber of Commerce, and held senior management positions at Cargill, Hill & Knowlton, and BankAmerica World Trade Corporation. Fluent in Mandarin, Mr. Holden lived in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taipei for more than 30 years, is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Preceded by Live Public Webcast

Condoleezza Rice, Former U.S. Secretary of State “China and the World”
3:00-3:45 pm, Physics-Atmospheric Sciences (PAS) 224

For more information contact: dpietz@email.arizona.edu or 520-621-1841

Tiexin Liang is the director of the documentary “Indie Game in China.” He is a senior gaming practitioner and researcher. In 2008, he founded the web- site WanGa.me. He played and recommended more than 5000 games through this website. In 2014, he founded his game company MakeBestGame, and his game work Blacksmith Story has repeatedly been recommended by major mo- bile game platforms. In addition, Liang is the judge of many independent game events such as China Independent Games Festival (IGF) and IndiePlay, the initi- ator of the China Independent Game Alliance (CiGA), and game columnist, etc.

Famed Japanese Heikyoku artist Tsutomu Arao will perform the 800-year-old epic tale, accompanied by biwa. The Tale of the Heike is the greatest of all Japanese warrior tales and one of the seminal works that has shaped Japanese literature, theatre, art and film down to the present day. Heikyoku is one of the oldest Japanese traditional musical styles, similar to the troubadour music of medieval Europe. The story is about the battle between the Heike and another powerful clan, the Genji, and it ends with the total defeat of the Heike in the tragic sea battle at Dan-no- ura. Wandering troubadours, blind musicians, chanted the tale, and later poets and playwrights took inspiration from it. Arao is one of few performers who can recite the whole story in the original style from the 13th century and works to preserve the style. He has performed Heikyoku more than 900 times.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

This presentation discusses the establishment of literary history (bunga- kushi) as an academic discipline in late nineteenth-century Japan, with special attention to the role of traditional Chinese fiction in defining the contours and content of Japanese “national literature” (kokubungaku). In an academic environment obsessed with the location and description of various racial, cultural, and psychological essences, Japanese histo- ries of Chinese literature were united by the claim that the authentic or “real” China could only be understood through previously marginalized genres such as fiction and drama. By positioning these genres in a bina- ry tension with an autocratic “Confucian ideology”, and by arguing that they could only flourish at moments of foreign invasion and contact, Jap- anese literary historians presented works like The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) and Romance of the Western Wing (Xixiang ji) as privileged points of access into the voices and experiences of a putative national people effaced in more elite disciplines like philosophy, ethics, and history.

William C. Hedberg is an assistant professor of Japanese at Arizona State Universi- ty, who specializes in the literature and culture of early modern Japan. His current project centers on the reception of late imperial Chinese fiction during the Edo and Meiji periods (17th-20th c.), with special emphasis on the novel, The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan).

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