Remaking the Earth, Exhausting the People: The Burden of Conservation in Modern China

featuring
Dr. Micah Muscolino
Professor and Pickowicz Endowed Chair of Modern Chinese History
University of California, San Diego

Speaker’s summary:
From the 1940s to the 1960s, state-led campaigns to conserve soil and water remade both the arid, erosion-prone landscape of Northwest China’s Loess Plateau and the lives of rural people. Drawing from his recent book, Micah Muscolino discusses how the Chinese state imposed the cost of these conservation measures on rural communities and how they navigated those demands. Weaving together archival research and oral history interviews, Muscolino’s multitiered investigation uncovers relationships between the forces of nature, Chinese state policies, and the embodied experiences of rural men and women. Because modern China’s revolutionary transformations fundamentally altered human relationships with the natural world, as his work demonstrates, reconstructing that history from the perspectives of China’s common people requires attentiveness to their everyday interactions with the environment.

Speaker’s Bio:
Dr. Micah Muscolino is Professor and Pickowicz Endowed Chair in modern Chinese history at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Fishing Wars and Environmental Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (Harvard Asia Center, 2009) and The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond, 1938-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2015). His recent books include Remaking the Earth, Exhausting the People: The Burden of Conservation in Modern China (University of Washington Press, 2025) and the edited volume Revolutionary Natures: Grassroots Environmental Histories of China’s Mao Era (University of Washington Press, 2026).

The views expressed are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect East-West Center policies or positions.

The China Seminar was founded by Dr. Daniel W.Y. Kwok in 1977. Under his guidance, it became a signature program of the Friends of the East-West Center (FEWC) in 2009. The program provides an informal venue for China experts, such as scholars, diplomats, and journalists, to present talks on aspects of China that interest the community and members of the Friends. Topics include politics, economics, social issues, history, culture, food, arts, and many other subjects.

Uncanny Beliefs:
Superstition in Modern Chinese History

featuring
Emily Baum
Professor of History, University of California, Irvine
and Director of the Long US-China Institute

Speaker’s summary:
In the early twentieth century, theorists around the world believed that “superstition” belonged to an era destined for irrelevance. Yet despite their confident predictions, so-called superstitions have endured. Perhaps nowhere has the history of superstition been more prolonged and tumultuous than in China. From the late nineteenth century to the present day, intellectuals and governing regimes have denigrated practices like divination, ancestor worship, and geomancy as unscientific, irrational, and unbefitting of a modern nation. Their attempts to root out such practices, however, have regularly encountered resistance from individuals who continue to find meaning in them. This talk, which is based on the speaker’s recent co-edited volume, seeks to understand what “superstition” has meant in modern China – and why acts deemed superstitious have remained so compelling to so many people, even in the face of continuous efforts to eradicate them.

Speaker’s Bio:
Emily Baum is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and the director of the Long US-China Institute. She is the author of The Invention of Madness: State, Society, and the Insane in Modern China (Chicago, 2018) and Needled: How Acupuncture Conquered America (Viking, 2027), and the co-editor (with Albert Wu) of Uncanny Beliefs: Superstition in Modern Chinese History (Harvard Asia Center, 2026). She sits on the board of directors for the Esherick-Ye Foundation and is a faculty advisor for the American Council of Learned Societies – Luce Foundation Program in China Studies.  

The views expressed are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect East-West Center policies or positions.

The China Seminar was founded by Dr. Daniel W.Y. Kwok in 1977. Under his guidance, it became a signature program of the Friends of the East-West Center (FEWC) in 2009. The program provides an informal venue for China experts, such as scholars, diplomats, and journalists, to present talks on aspects of China that interest the community and members of the Friends. Topics include politics, economics, social issues, history, culture, food, arts, and many other subjects.

Narratives, China, and the Arctic

featuring
Dr. Charles E. Morrison
Senior Fellow and former President of the East-West Center

Speaker’s summary:
Narratives play a powerful role in shaping public and policymaker understanding of issues and intentions. This talk will explore how narratives about China and the Arctic interact to provide a story of China aggressively pursuing resource, transportation, and geopolitical interests in the region.  China’s own rhetoric of a “Polar Silk Road” and China as “a near Arctic state” have buttressed this story. But WHAT do the facts on the ground tell us so far about China’s presence and interest in the region? How does it compare with its interests in other world regions? What assets does it have, and what obstacles does it face? How do its relations with Russia and the United States affect China’s Arctic posture?  

Speaker’s Bio:
Dr. Charles E. Morrison has held several positions at the Center, including president from August 1, 1998 through December 30, 2016.  In these capacities he has had extensive involvement in the conceptualization, organization and funding of multilateral, policy-oriented education, research and dialogue projects. He is a strong advocate of the concept of Asia Pacific community.

He serves on the Standing Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council and was the organization’s international chair and co-chair from 2005 to 2012. He is a past chair of the US National Consortium of APEC Study Centers and a research adviser to two high-level bi-national Japan-US commissions.  He was associated in the 1980s and 1990s with the Japan Center for International Exchange.  In his early career he served as a legislative assistant to the late Senator William V. Roth, Jr., working primarily on defense, foreign policy, trade, and government ethics issues.

He holds a Ph.D. in international relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he also once taught Southeast Asian international relations.

The views expressed are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect East-West Center policies or positions.

The China Seminar was founded by Dr. Daniel W.Y. Kwok in 1977. Under his guidance, it became a signature program of the Friends of the East-West Center (FEWC) in 2009. The program provides an informal venue for China experts, such as scholars, diplomats, and journalists, to present talks on aspects of China that interest the community and members of the Friends. Topics include politics, economics, social issues, history, culture, food, arts, and many other subjects.