Christopher A Ford - Sino-American Competition in the 21st Century

May 18: An Imperial Baseline: The Conceptual Terrain of Ancient Sinocentrism

In this lecture, Dr. Ford will discuss the pre-modern conceptual and historical scene leading up to the 19thCentury’s epochal encounter between the Chinese imperial world and worldview and those of the Western powers, drawing out key themes in ancient Chinese culture, governance, and self-perception.

May 25: The Qing and the Western “Other”

This lecture will discuss the challenges that emerged and struggles that developed as the ancient Chinese conceptual world collided with that of Industrial Revolution-era Western modernity in the late years of the Qing Dynasty, at a time in which the Qing was in a period of decline while the European powers (and soon also a modernizing Japan) were in the full flush of an era of dynamic growth and expansion.

June 1: Mao and Modernity

This lecture brings Dr Ford’s account of the conceptual and civilizational clash between the Chinese and Western worldviews into the mid-20th Century, exploring continuities and novelties these dynamics displayed in the early years of the People’s Republic under Mao Zedong during its early industrialization, the Great Leap Forward, and the period leading up to and including the Sino-Soviet split.

June 8: Chinese Power and the World’s Future

Dr Ford’s final lecture in this series will explore China’s post-Maoist period of “reform and opening,” and its ambitious campaign to cultivate growth, prosperity, and “Comprehensive National Power” in service of a grand strategy of “return” or “national rejuvenation” in the years from Deng Xiaoping’s ascendancy to the revived one-man rule of Xi Jinping today. He will also attempt to draw out some of the implications of this sweep of events for present-day strategic competition and the future of international order.

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