SPEAKERS
Helwig SCHMIDT-GLINTZER, Founding Director, China Centrum Tübingen
LIANG Xuecun 梁雪村, Assistant Professor, Renmin University of China
ABSTRACT
** Professor Schmidt-Glintzer had a personal emergency and left for Germany right before the event, so the talk has seen professor Liang Xuecun taking the lead in the explanation **
Professor Schmidt-Glintzer will talk about the predicament of China after the end of Imperial rule as a country that tries to become a member of the global community while at the same time maintaining a distinct identity. In a sense China has not yet regained an idea of itself and indeed centers around an “empty space”, such as the empty character of Tian’Anmen Square, the symbolic center of China. At the same time China shows a remarkable ability to deal with contradictions both within the country and in its relations with the neighbors.
Schmidt-Glintzer will delineate the historical identity of China as the center of All Below Heaven – 天下, as a multicultural entity that had to deal with migration, with centrifugal and centripetal forces, as well as extensive foreign exchanges for centuries. The core question is whether or not China could be a model for modernization and ordering of the world in a harmonious way.
