Greetings!

Welcome to a new academic year! We hope you are staying healthy and resilient in this challenging time marked by interlocking crises of pandemic, natural disasters, economic downturn and social unrest.

This past summer was like no other. We canceled all on-site programming such as our traditional youth camp, but we soldiered on with a series of webinars and organized online discussions and conferences on important topics such as the Hong Kong national security law, the clash over journalists between U.S. and China and the impact of COVID-19 on the Chinese economy. As the convener of the Working Group on Science and Technology in U.S.-China Relations, we continue to organize virtual policy discussion sessions with the aim to produce a major report around the election time. Please stay tuned for the announcement about the report’s release in late October.

Perhaps the highlight of our policy engagement over the summer was the virtual session for the U.S.-based members of the UC San Diego Forum on U.S.-China Relations. Forum members dived into focused discussions about what was going on inside China, science and technology issues in the bilateral relations and the ripple effects of Hong Kong on Taiwan’s status and security. 

Summer was also a time of planning, revamping and launching new projects. We worked with our communications team to spruce up our website, which now contains more content related to the center’s research, policy and public education. Four teams of students worked with center staff and faculty on several projects, including research, news analysis and expert interviews. All these efforts led to the launch of a new content-based bulletin called China 360°, which is designed to bring you original writings and multimedia products by the center scholars. In the future, China 360° will be the center’s primary platform for content delivery while this quarterly newsletter will profile our scholars and provide news, events and administrative notices.

Speaking of multimedia, we want to give special mention of our new webcast series entitled China Throughlines, which features UC San Diego’s fantastic historians. In these short webcasts, our China historians strike up conversations with their colleagues from around the world to connect contemporary events to China’s storied past. We become better analysts of China today with a contextualized understanding of its history.

Last but not least, we are so pleased to welcome on board the inaugural cohort of nonresident scholars, all top researchers in the China field from West Coast universities and research institutions. Some already work closely with our faculty or on center projects, while others complement our research agenda. We hope to create more opportunities for inter-collegiate collaborations that will bring the best evidence-based research on China, with the widest scope from law to environment to foreign policy and public opinion. 

One silver lining during this pandemic is our ability to connect with you virtually across geography and timezones, and we look forward to seeing you this fall at our webinars. In addition, you can stay engaged through reading original analysis from the center’s opinion page and the China Focus blog, listening to the China 21 podcast, watching China Throughlines and joining the conversation through Facebook and Twitter.
 
With warm regards,

Susan Shirk, Chair, 21st Century China Center; and
Lei Guang, Director, 21st Century China Center
Featured News
Report: Science and Technology In U.S.-China Relations
The working group is publishing a new report that will take on conventional wisdom on managing competition in four areas: fundamental research, 5G, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. Stay turned for the roll-out date.
We recently debuted a new publication China 360°, designed to bring you original writings and multimedia products by the center faculty, staff and students. It curates expert interviews, data visualization, webcasts and policy reports to keep you abreast of the complex and multidimensional developments in China and U.S.-China relations.
Current Ichimore Student Research awardees D.G. Kim and Sichen Li from Political Science are fielding a survey experiment on Chinese Public Opinion on U.S.-China Relations during COVID-19. Ke Nie from Sociology is conducting a case study of censorship of Chinese music using an original dataset of over 20,000 hip hop songs. Fall applications will be reviewed starting Oct. 15. Apply now.
Upcoming Events
U.S. Bans on TikTok and WeChat: Legal and Policy Issues
Oct. 5, 2020 | 5-6 p.m. PDTRegister
Susan Shirk, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and James Dempsey discuss the controversial executive orders from the perspectives of constitutional law, data privacy, cyber security and the U.S.-China competition for technological dominance. (Hosted by Asia Society Southern California)

A Sensational Encounter with High Socialist China
Oct. 6, 2020 | 4-5 p.m. PDT | Register
Paul Pickowicz shares his recollection of the historic visit of fourteen American students (and one Canadian) to China in 1971, one of the first approved for American scholars after the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949 and occurred prior to President Nixon’s famous trip.

China’s Long Road from Revolution to Reform
Oct. 14, 2020 | 5-6 p.m. PDT| Register
Yale historian Odd Arne Westad presents a broad history of China in the 1970s from his forthcoming book (co-authored with Chen Jian) and reflects on the legacies of the reform era and the impact on U.S.-China relations today. 

Report Launch: Science and Technology in U.S.-China Relations
Late October | Program to be announced
The working group, formed by the Taskforce on U.S.-China Policy, is publishing a new report that will take on conventional wisdom on managing competition in four areas: fundamental research, 5G, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. 

India and China at an Inflection Point
Oct. 28, 2020 | 7-8 p.m. PDT | Register
Nirupama Rao, India's former Ambassador to China and the U.S., addresses whether the recent India-China crisis at the Himalayan border signals the end of India's “strategic autonomy” at a challenging time for the Indian economy amid a pandemic.

CHINA Town Hall
Nov. 10, 2020 | Save the Date
Investor Ray Dalio keynotes the annual national webcast hosted by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, followed by local discussion moderated by the center faculty.

Southeast Asia's China Challenge
Nov. 18, 2020 | Save the Date
Journalist Murray Hiebert presents his new book “Under Beijing's Shadow: Southeast Asia's China Challenge.”
Profiles of China Scholars and Speakers
We welcome a new cohort of 19 nonresident scholars, who are China experts from West Coast educational or research institutions. Their contributions will increase the depth and scope of the center's research and policy engagement. Meet them here.
Karl Gerth, professor of history and chair of Chinese Studies, published a new book, “Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism Negated China’s Communist Revolution,” reinterpreting the Maoist era as a period of expanding consumerism and the building of “state capitalism” fraught with implications for the present. Listen to this podcast interview.
Quick Links
China Focus is an online magazine dedicated to providing depth and context for understanding China and U.S.-China relations. It is run by GPS students with the support of the center.

Listen and subscribe to the China 21 Podcast.

For students, faculty and others interested in new academic research, sign up for upcoming China Research Workshops.

Support – The 21st Century China Center receives support from private donors, alumni, community members, foundations and institutional partners. Our founders and members of the Leadership Circle have remained strong pillars of support for our center. For a list of donors and institutional supporters, click here. The center welcomes tax-deductible donations to support our work on China and U.S.-China relations.
21st Century China Center 
School of Global Policy and Strategy
This email was sent to friends registered for news & events updates. Questions? Contact 21china@ucsd.edu.