This is a crucial moment to take stock of the complicated impact the People’s Republic of China is having on the global order—and the complicated ways that international trends are altering life in the world’s most populous country. Climate change, human rights abuses and debates, diplomatic relations, economic booms, financial crises, technological shifts, and, of course, pandemics—there is a need to come to terms with the PRC when considering any of these issues and many more as well. And the start of 2022 is a symbolically significant point in time to reflect on the PRC and the global order, as Beijing’s relationship to both the United Nations and the United States changed dramatically half-a-century ago. In 1971, the seat at the U.N. held by a representative sent from Taipei was given to one sent by Beijing, and then, exactly fifty years before the date of the UCI Forum for the Academy and the Public’s event, Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong held their historical summit.
With all of this in mind, in restarting its annual tradition of holding lively and wide-ranging two-day symposia that was put on hold last year due to COVID-19, UCI’s Forum for the Academy and the Public has chosen to focus on the PRC. Global China in an Anxious Age will bring together scholars from many fields (from law and various branches of the humanities to glaciology and pharmacology), as well as non-academics of many kinds (including representatives of the worlds of journalism, tech, and policy making) to take stock of the challenges and contradictions associated with the country’s dramatic rise. We will also explore and debate the meaning of the seismic shifts associated with China that are shaking the planet in this era of cascading and interrelated crises.
Co-Sponsored by:
UCI School of Humanities
UCI School of Law
The Office of Global Engagement
UCI School of Social Sciences
UCI School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences,
Department of History
UCI Literary Journalism
Department of Film and Media Studies
UCI Jordan Center for Persian Studies
UCI Medical Humanities
UCI Illuminations
The International Center for Writing and Translation
The Long US-China Institute,
The Newkirk Center for Science and Society
and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Header Photo ©Tong Lam, from the series “Where there is no room for fiction,” 2021