Problems in Contemporary China

Catalog description

This course is designed to examine selected major problems in contemporary China (1980s to the present). On the one hand, these problems can be seen as partially representative of China’s social, economic, cultural, and intellectual transformation from a Maoist-socialist state to a capitalist one-party state, transformations that have had and continue to have far-reaching consequences for China and the world in the past three decades. On the other hand, and just as importantly, these problems also can be seen as partially representative of the global transformations that intersected with and helped shape the direction of China’s changes, just as China firmly integrated itself into global capitalism and its attendant systems of knowledge production and social formations beginning in the 1980s. I have chosen to focus on the problems in which I am particularly interested; there are many other potential ones. If you do not see something on this syllabus, we will not be covering it in this class. However, as there is a mini-research paper requirement at the end of the semester, you may explore another aspect of contemporary China in which you are particularly interested to fulfill that requirement.