China Beatniks in Beijing: II

Yong Chen, UCI history professor and China Beat contributor, was one of several of our regular contributors to attend the Beijing Forum, an international meeting of scholars to discuss vital issues facing the world. This year's theme for the conference was "The Harmony of Civilizations and Prosperity for All" ("文明的和谐与共同繁荣") and aimed at promoting the development of the social sciences and humanities in the Asia-Pacific region.

While in Beijing, Yong Chen gave a talk on "Chinese-Americans and the American Government." A report about this talk has been posted (in Chinese) by Yong's former Beijing University classmate, Yang Yusheng, at the website Academic Criticism (学术批评网). You can check out the full report here.

As mentioned in our previous post on "China Beatniks in Beijing," Ken Pomeranz and Jeff Wasserstrom also gave public talks while in Beijing. For a write-up of Wasserstrom's talk "Tale of Two Cities" (written by another regular China Beat contributor), see Jeremiah Jenne's post at Jottings:

"Professor Wasserstrom, who has also published a volume on student protests in 20th century China, argues that the government is less concerned about the numbers of local protests than they are about the spector of key issues linking the interests of different social classes or geographic areas."

EDIT: For another take on Wasserstrom's talk, see this piece from the Hindustan Times, by a reporter who attended the lecture.