S01: Introduction: Chinese Dreams

• What kind of song is The Internationale?
• When is the video made, and why?
• Who’s singing? Who’s the audience?
• How to read a song as primary source? What can it tell us about China today?

• Time: Centennial of the Chinese Communist Party in 2021
• Place: Tsinghua University, China’s premier school, and home to CCP technocratic elites
• World’s people, united: Students and faculty, both domestic and int’l

• 1911: Founded as prep school for students going to study in the United States on grounds of Qing imperial garden
• 1925: Became a national, comprehensive university

• After 1949, Tsinghua was reformed to align with Soviet model
• Humanities and social sciences depts were spun off, and it became China’s top university for science, engineering, and technology.
• Breeding ground of technocratic officials who rule China today

• 1980s: End of polytechnic model, return to comprehensive university
• 2016: Schwarzman Scholarship established (US$400 million endowment) by Steven Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone

• Xi Jinping: Born on June 15, 1953, in Beijing.
• “Red princeling”: son of Xi Zhongxun, a former Politburo member and vice premier who became an architect of China’s Special Economic Zones in the early 1980s.
• “Sent-down youth” in Shaanxi (1969–1975), joined the CCP in 1974.
• Undergraduate education in chemical engineering from Tsinghua (1975–79)
• PhD in law (Marxism) via part-time studies, 1998–2002

• Labor dispute at Jasic Technology factory in Shenzhen, China, lasted from July to August 2018.
• Workers sought to form a trade union after poor working conditions, low wages, and forced overtime.
• PKU and other Chinese college students joined striking workers in Shenzhen.
• 2018: Org disbanded, leader and multiple students arrested

• Why, for all its atrocities and violences, is the Mao Zedong era (1949-1976) still remembered so positively?
• How could the Chinese Communist Party crack down on a Marxist society?
• The CCP celebrates its revolutionary heritage, but why is it also so afraid of revolution and of its people?

• What is “China”: Nation / Empire, Ethnicity / Race, Culture / Civilization?
• When to begin (and end) the story? What changed (or not)?
• The Chinese Dream: What dream? Whose dream?

People’s Republic of China

中华 / 人民 / 共和国

• Size and scale
• Unity and longevity of “civilization”
• Centrality and pride

Changes:

• Not equal to territories encompassed (or claimed) by the People’s Republic of China
• From small settlements to Eurasian power
• Expansion (and contraction) of borders: Different dynasties controlled varying territories

Continuities:

• The regions under Chinese control have always been in flux – and still changing.
• The east as epicenter of power: Most dynasties setting up their capitals around the Yellow river.
• China in the middle of the Eurasian continent: Geographical core helped shape identities, boundaries, and cultures

Authors:

• Sun Yat-sen
• Chiang Kai-shek
• Xi Jinping

Questions:

• What is China, according to the author?
• When is the author writing? To whom? Why?
• What do these dreams have in common? How do they differ?

• What is China and who are the Chinese, according to Xi Jinping?
• Who / What is missing from his definition of China?
• How does Xi’s vision of China’s past shape its present and future?

• “Rejuvenation” – not rise – of China: It’s a return to greatness.
• Many CCP goals, such as “building a moderately prosperous society”, are rooted in Chinese history.
• Despite earlier iconoclasm, the CCP now sees itself as a custodian of Chinese tradition and culture.

• What is the Chinese nation?
• What is China’s national humiliation?
• What explains China’s low standing on the international stage?
• What is Chiang’s revolution? What is his goal?

• “Our nation is of one stock”, formed by “the blending of numerous clans”, ultimately blended into “one nation”.
• “At no time has it used military force to expand”: the blending was cultural assimilation, rather than conquest.
• Five peoples – Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, Muslims – but their difference due to region and religions, rather than “race or blood”

• Who belongs to the Chinese nation? Who does not?
• Explain Three principles of the people: Nationalism, Democracy, People’s livelihood
• Define the Five powers: What are they? Why not three?
• What is the goal of the revolution? What does it involve?

• How did revolution – which is about destroying the old world – become a tradition (and a source of legitimacy)?
• What is the master narrative of modern China: revolution or modernization?
• How did the CCP’s cultural policy shift from iconoclasm to traditionalism and conservatism?

• Is the 20th century – the “century of humiliation” – just a blip in Chinese history?
• Is the Communist period just another dynasty in China’s long history, or a real rupture?

• What’s distinctive about China’s modern history?
• How does Chinese history complicate our theoretical explanations for global trends – collapse of empire, political revolutions, etc.?

• Size and power: “The only country capable of challenging the US-led world order”
• “Making the World Safe for Autocrats”: Ideological rivalry
• Will the CCP collapse?

• “A civilization pretending to be a state?”: World’s oldest continuous civilization
• Holding on to the empire: Retention of most of Qing domains, pre-modern empires
• Socialism with Chinese characteristics: Peasant revolution, with protracted period in the underground

• Permanent revolution: Why did the CCP continue the revolution long after it gained power?
• Authoritarian resilience: Why and how did the CCP survive the Cold War?
• Capitalism without democracy: How did China become an economic superpower, despite lack of free market, rule of law, freedom of speech, etc.?

Book Cover: The World is Flat

• 1989: Collapse of Berlin Wall
• 1992: North American Free Trade Agreement signed
• 1995: Common Schengen border in Europe
• 1999: Euro introduced
• 2000: China joins the WTO

• 2004: Facebook launched
• 2006: Google launched in China
• 2010: Instagram released; Google closes in China
• 2010-2012: Arab Spring
• 2016: Douyin (Chinese version of Tiktok) launched

If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what citizenship means.

Theresa May, 2016

• What explains the resurgence of nationalism?
• Are we in a “de-globalizing” world? What is driving the backlash against globalism?
• Are historians (who are tasked to explain the shift) part of the problem?
• What new meta-narratives do we need, if any?

Tensions nationalism and imperialism:

• Nationalism fuels imperialist ambitions.
• Conversely, imperialism leads to nationalist movements seeking self-determination.

Tension between nation and state:

• Who qualifies to be a rights-bearing citizen? Who has the right to have rights?
• Ethnic nationalism creates forms of exclusion and undermines political equality.

• “The history of nation-states is the history of human rights, and vice-versa”.
• Nation-state remains the most important setting for both lodging and realizing rights claims.
• Int’l organizations (such as the UN) and laws important, but still depend on state sovereignty and the right of self-determination.
• Challenge: How to continue the global struggle for human rights in the age of nation-states?

China’s reform and opening up era:

• Americanization
• Westernization
• Globalization

Now that these fundamental pillars are weakening, which threaten:

• Export market (~20% of Chinese GDP in 2023)
• Access to foreign investment and technology

De-globalization, combined with two other D’s – debt and demography – weigh on China’s prospects.

A useful instrument for:

• Source of legitimacy
• Political leverage and diplomatic signaling

But at what costs?

• Source of int’l backlash
• Potential for anti-government criticisms and actions
• Contradicts own narrative of supporting global order

Intellectual history:

• What are the dominant intellectual questions of the time?
• Who gets to tell the history? Whose voices are left out?

Everyday life:

• How did ordinary people experience the revolution?

Frontier and borderlands:

• Xinjiang, Tibet, Manchuria, Hong Kong

China in the World:

• Circulation of people, ideas, and institutions
• Interaction between domestic politics and int’l relations

Goals:

• A variety sources: not just texts, but also films, images, material objects
• Collaborative and interactive: Discussion, role play, or breakout groups every session
• Ability to do history: Primary source project, using Dartmouth collection
• Visits to the Hood Museum and Rauner Special Collection

Your tasks

• Two exams
• One primary source paper
• One film review