Speaker:

Professor Frank N Pieke
Professor of Modern China Studies, Leiden Asia Centre, Leiden University and
Visiting Research Professor, East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore

Date & Time:

Friday, 30 July 2021
3:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Video recording:

Please visit EAI’s YouTube channel for a video recording of the seminar.

Abstract:

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is currently in the throes of redefining itself as not just China’s ruling party, but also the dominant political force of global China. Following the path of Chinese globalisation, this project overlaps with – but is different from – China’s much maligned strategy of influencing and interfering in the society and politics of other countries. However, the principal aim of the CCP’s global extension is not to meddle in the affairs of other countries, but rather to tie Chinese people, goods, money, business and institutions that have ventured abroad back into the strategy and domestic system of China and the CCP. The seminar shows that China’s emerging superpower is informed both by China’s unique pattern of globalisation and the CCP’s own understanding of the nature, aims and modalities of its rule, which can only partially be compared to those of earlier superpowers.

About the Speaker:

Frank N Pieke (1957) studied Cultural Anthropology and Chinese Studies at the University of Amsterdam and the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his PhD in 1992. After lectureships in Leiden and Oxford, he took up the Chair in Modern China studies at Leiden University in 2010. In Oxford, Pieke set up and directed the University of Oxford’s China Centre. In Leiden, he was co-founder and first executive director of the Leiden Asia Centre. Between 2018 and 2020, he was the director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. Pieke’s research revolves around governance in China and evolution of the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese globalisation and impact of China on Europe. His current project is on “The rise of China and the consequences of superpower”, which asks how China’s emerging superpower status will change China. His most recent books are The Good Communist (2009) and Knowing China (2016), both published by Cambridge University Press. He just completed an edited volume titled Global East Asia that will be published by the University of California Press in September 2021. He could be contacted at f.n.pieke@hum.leidenuniv.nl.