Engaging China
Date: 11/18/2022
Time: 10:00 am EST
Presenter: Dr. Mel Gurtov
Professor Emeritus of Political Science
Engaging China is an argument on behalf of deep U.S. - China engagement to counteract the increasing risk today of violent confrontation. The book directly confronts the bipartisan "China threat" consensus in the U.S. and hardline Chinese perceptions of the U.S. by underscoring areas of common interest and suggesting that domestic insecurity significantly influences their leaders' foreign polices. The author proposes a U.S. policy toward China of competitive coexistence, which would benefit both countries' economy and society.
Zero-COVID, Carbon Neutrality, and the Future of Coercive Environmentalism
Date: 10/11/2022
Time: 6:30 - 8:00 pm EST
Presenter: Dr. Yifei Li
New York University
“At all cost” is a buzz phrase under China’s unrelenting approach to pandemic control, known as the zero-COVID policy, which promises to keep the country’s COVID infection numbers at or near zero. This policy normalizes an entire suite of highly restrictive measures, such as curbs on international and domestic travel, mass testing and disinfection requirements for people, goods, pets, and surfaces, “close-loop” quarantine mandates, and prolonged lockdowns in cities all over the country. Harrowing as it is to be on the receiving end of zero-COVID, the policy is entirely consistent with the Chinese state’s increasingly coercive gestures in recent years. In this sense, zero-COVID is aptly seen as a “test run” of how the Chinese state attempts to normalize coercion in its governance of environmental and public health crises alike. As such, understanding zero-COVID provides critical insights into the risks and gains of the kind of carbon-neutral future that China has pledged to achieve by 2060. This presentation discusses the parallels between the zero-COVID policy and climate governance in China, underscoring both the promise and risks of coercive environmentalism.
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