China Studies Research Centre and La Trobe Asia, La Trobe University
6 – 7:30pm, Tuesday 01 October 2019
Room 3.09, Level 3, La Trobe University City Campus
360 Collins Street, Melbourne
The People’s Republic of China will celebrate its 70th anniversary on Tuesday, October 1. La Trobe University’s China Studies Research Centre and La Trobe Asia will present a panel discussion in which some of Australia’s leading China experts will review the PRC’s highs and lows, its failures and its successes, through the 27 Mao Zedong years and the 43 years since then, of Deng Xiaoping’s reform-and-opening followed by Xi Jinping’s New Era for “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The panel will also look ahead and ask whether the PRC may credibly contemplate a further 70 years, after overtaking in early 2024 the lifespan of its original Big Brother, the USSR. It will consider why, on this platinum anniversary, the ruling Chinese Communist Party is unlikely to invite members of the broader population to share the celebrations – with the usual big parades in Beijing traversing deliberately silent streets. It will consider the extent to which China’s modernisation – in 1949, the average life expectancy was 35 years, and the average annual income 16 US dollars – was based on the earlier efforts of the Kuomintang, and to what extent it is to be fully credited to the party. And it will compare China’s post-World War II progress with that of its neighbours.
Presenters
Author and columnist Rowan Callick, an Industry Fellow at Griffith University’s Asia Institute and a member of the advisory boards of La Trobe University’s China Studies Centre, and of La Trobe Asia, three times worked as a China Correspondent, once for The Australian Financial Review and twice for The Australian. He has written 3 books, published in both English and Chinese, on contemporary China, on which he has spoken widely, including at Melbourne, Tasmania, Griffith, Auckland and London Universities, and at the Australian Federal Government’s China Day.
Professor Baogang He, Alfred Deakin Professor and Chair in International Relations at Deakin University, is widely known for his research in Chinese democratization and politics. He has also recently conducted research on security regionalism, focusing on the South China Sea debate.
Dr Gerry Groot is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies in the Department of Asian Studies, University of Adelaide. He has a particular interest in United Front Work and how the Chinese Communist Party has coped with the rise of new classes and interest groups.
Dr Delia Lin is Senior lecturer in Chinese Studies in the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on political discourse, ideology and patterns of governance under the Chinese Communist Party, with a special interest in the role imperial Confucian-Legalist statecraft plays in Chinese governance today.