China’s Rise: Prosperity, Power, Pushback

Date: Wednesday, 27 March
Time: 5.30 - 6.30pm (Reception to follow from 6.30pm)
Venue: MZ 01, Mezzanine Floor, Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus, Victoria University of Wellington (map)

Abstract

In 2018, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) celebrated the prosperity that four decades of ‘reform and opening up’ has delivered to the vast majority of its population. Its rapidly growing economy has made the PRC, by most measures, more powerful than at any other time in its history and one of the most powerful countries in the world. The China Story Yearbook 2018: Power surveys the various ways in which the Party-state wields its hard, soft, and sharp power, both in China and abroad. Citizens of the PRC have long had to negotiate the state’s influence in their life. Increasingly, diaspora communities and non-Chinese citizens, companies and governments around the world are also learning to negotiate China’s might and influence. Some submit, some push back. Jane Golley, one of the book’s co-editors, is joined by Lili Song, a contributing author, to discuss the debate surrounding China’s rising power and its growing influence across the globe, ‘Girl power’ (the state of feminism and gender inequality in China today, and what Chinese women are doing about it), the ‘Power of Giving’ (China’s deepening role in international refugee affairs), and more.

China's Rise: Prosperity, Power, Pushback (PDF)

About the speakers

Associate Professor Jane Golley is an economist and Director of the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) at The Australian National University (ANU). Jane is an ANU graduate (BEc, Hons, 1993) and worked in the Asia Section of the Australian Commonwealth Treasury before undertaking her Mphil and Dphil in Economics at the University of Oxford. After eight years studying and teaching economics in Oxford, she returned to the ANU’s School of Economics in 2003, moving to the Crawford School of Public Policy in 2009, and to CIW in 2011. Her research over several decades has covered a wide range of Chinese transition and development issues. She is a co-editor of the China Story Yearbook series, including Power, published in 2019.

Dr Lili Song is a lecturer in law at the University of Otago. The core of her current research is refugee law and policy in Asia and the South Pacific. She is working on a book on Chinese refugee law and policy, which is contracted to Cambridge University Press. Lili received her law degrees in China and New Zealand. She was previously a lecturer at the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu and has held research or visiting positions at the Australian National University, Oxford University, Melbourne University, the Michigan Law School, and the Humanities Institute in Myanmar.

If you are interested to attend, please email Lai Ching or call 04 463 9549 to RSVP.