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event #04
November, 30 2010

“Nationalism and Politics in China”

Supplementary Materials

Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2nd edition, 1999, pp. 139-488

“In this widely acclaimed history of modern China, Jonathan Spence achieves a fine blend of narrative richness and efficiency. Praised as “a miracle of readability and scholarly authority,” (Jonathan Mirsky) The Search for Modern China offers a matchless introduction to China’s history.” – W.W. Norton & Company

China’s Ethnic Policy and Common Prosperity and Development of All Ethnic Groups, Information Office of the State Council of the PRC, Sept. 2009, available here 

“Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, following the guideline of unity among all ethnic groups for common prosperity and drawing on China’s historical experience and the useful practices of other countries, always with a view to China’s actual situation, the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government have carved out a path for the successful solution to ethnic issues with Chinese characteristics, exercised the ethnic policy featuring equality, unity, regional ethnic autonomy, and common prosperity for all ethnic groups, thus forming a relatively complete ethnic policy system.

This correct ethnic policy in line with China’s actual situation has fostered the unity and harmonious coexistence of all ethnic groups who are striving with one mind for economic development, political stability, cultural prosperity and social harmony. The ethnic minorities, minority areas, and relationships among ethnic groups have all experienced tremendous historic changes.” – from the Preface

Lowell Dittmer and Samuel Kim, “In Search of a Theory of National Identity”. China’s Quest for National Identity. Lowell Dittmer and Samuel Kim, eds. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993, pp. 1- 31

“How to define a Chinese national identity remains as hotly contested a question among today’s Chinese citizens as it has been among foreign observers. This volume brings together ten new essays by an interdisciplinary group of leading sinologists and offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the nature of Chinese national identity in past and contemporary settings.” – Cornell University Press

October 26, 2010, Bridge Café (Wudaokou)

Speaker: ZHANG Lijia 张丽佳, Writer, Journalist, and Public Commentator

Zhang Lijia is the author of the best-seller Socialism is Great, an interesting portrait of social change in contemporary China. Now a writer, journalist, social commentator and TV show host; Zhang Lijia spent the 1980s in a factory in Nanjing that produced inter-continental missiles capable of reaching North America. To escape the oppressive routine, she taught herself English.

Zhang Lijia summarized the stations in her journey from being a disillusioned worker at a Nanjing rocket manufacturing site to an organizer in support of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989. She illustrated the sea-change sweeping China in the reform era using her biography. Zhang Lijia discussed her book, her personal experience of change in China over the past three decades and her thoughts on China’s position in the world.