Photographs and audio are now available from the February 4, 2015 event “Chinese Dreams and Chinese Nightmares, 1989 to 2014.” The standing-room only event featured a lecture by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chancellor’s Professor of History, University of California, Irvine. Professor Wasserstrom’s lecture was moderated by David Stark, Arthur Lehman Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Columbia University.
During the lecture and the discussion afterward, Professor Wasserstrom addressed the following questions: How has the Chinese Communist Party stayed in power so long after similar organizations fell in Eastern and Central Europe? Are the strategies that it has been using to deal with protest since 1989 still effective? What makes Xi Jinping similar to and different from his immediate predecessors? Referring to a range of photographs and illustrations, Professor Wasserstrom discussed the different sorts of dreams that inspire hope and nightmares and that can cause anxiety among various groups within the People’s Republic of China, from officials in Beijing to students in Hong Kong, from migrant workers in Dongguan to Uyghurs in Urumqi.
The event was co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and The Harriman Institute. It was part of Harriman’s 2014-15 series “Learning from Transition: From the Local to the Global: Who is Learning From Whom?” and it was led by Professor Stark and postdoctoral fellow Elena Krumova.
For audio of the event on iTunes, please click here.
