Chao center inaugurated with China speech
By examining China’s historical experiences, we can more fully appreciate the underpinnings of the issues that the country faces in this pivotal contemporary period, noted China historian Jonathan Spence said at the inaugural lecture of the Chao Center for Asian Studies on Friday.
Speaking to an audience of several hundred in the Shell Auditorium at McNair Hall, Spence, the Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, shared the stage the newly endowed T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Center for Asian Studies.
Spence celebrated the center’s opening.
“I’ve never launched a center before, but I’ve never launched a battleship either,” Spence said. “I’ve always wanted to do both.”
The Chao Center aims to examine Asia through the lens of transnationalism, which studies the flow of cultural, historical, linguistic and other phenomena in a way that deemphasizes national institutions and borders.
Spence said his topic appropriately captured this academic approach: “China and the World: The Enigma of Transnational Contact.”
“I use the term ‘enigma’ on purpose, because none of us truly knows where China is going,” Spence said. “This is an absolutely pivotal moment for Chinese studies. China’s focus is shifting, and we are shifting in our approaches to China.”
Spence began his speech by recalling the country in its historical context. He recounted four short scenes from the past, each one hundred years apart, and he said these scenes contained elements that suggest some of the extraordinary range of China’s future challenges and phenomena.
Spence’s stories ranged from an encounter between Chinese Christian peasants and Jesuit missionaries in southern China in 1695 to trade negotiations between the Chinese emperor and British ambassadors in Beijing a century later.
Spence then described the scene in the summer of 1895, when scholars gathered in the capital and debated a recent, humiliating loss to the Japanese. He said they demanded reform, particularly in the educational system, and they asked what the curriculum should be in the future. Spence said there was no group of qualified Chinese ready to step into the role of educators in such a reform system.
“In the midst of the humiliation of the war, a startling number of Chinese called for increasing the number of Japanese instructors,” Spence said. “This ambiguity is the perfect example of an enigma: bringing the conquerors to your own country as the pedagogues of the new generation, especially when they don’t speak Chinese. What does that say about the future role of your country?”
Spence ended his vignettes with an account of the 1997 handover of British Hong Kong to China, symbolic of China’s rising role moving into the twenty-first century. Spence said the present offers a connection to these anecdotes. Issues of religion, trade and diplomacy, education and the role of democracy are all relevant to the contemporary discourse on China, and Asia in general, Spence said.
With that agenda, Spence began adding new issues and questions of interest to future scholars. He transformed from a historian to a scholar of geopolitics and public policy, posing questions on a broad range of topics, including international relations, the environment, this year’s summer Olympics in Beijing and China as a post-revolutionary society. He asked the crowd if China’s energy needs are a threat to the United States, as well as China’s future if it becomes a major naval power.
“The greatest enigma of all is India and its relationship with China,” Spence said in closing. “There are 2.5 billion people between the two.”
Brown College senior Tyler Barth said he enjoyed the lecture.
“I really liked his discussion of the current debate over whether China has historically been a single country or an empire,” Barth said.
Outlying areas like Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang have passed in and out of direct Chinese control throughout the centuries, making Chinese claims tenuous and controversial.
“My biggest complaint was that Professor Spence had a considerable number of questions, but not many answers,” Barth said.
Jones College junior Lily Banerjee said she was intrigued by Spence’s presentation of the material, using the small anecdotes to tell his story as opposed to a connected linear narrative.
“I was intrigued by the topic and sad he couldn’t get into more specific detail,” Bannerjee said. “Overall, it was very good.”
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