'First Wednesdays' China Faculty lunch talks

SIAS seminar room, Hester Hall 140,
12noon – 1:15pm, lunch provided.
Open to OU Faculty, staff and graduate students. Talks in Chinese and English.
Please rsvp to Xue Le @ uschina@ou.edu

Fall 2009 Schedule

September 2
Yu Ning 於宁, Professor of Modern languages and International and Area Studies
“The Beijing Olympics and Beijing Opera: The Promotion of National Pride and Civil Behavior in a CCTV Olympics Commercial”
This talk is a cognitive semantic analysis of a CCTV Olympics commercial, which is one of a series designed and produced in preparation for, and in celebration of, the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. The commercial converges on the theme: “To mount the stage of the world, and to put on a show of China”. That is, China sees her hosting of the 2008 Olympics by Beijing as a great opportunity for her to step onto the international stage to perform a show of China. This important theme, which alludes to China’s globalization and retention of cultural identity, is conveyed in terms of a central metaphor of theatrical performance: hosting the beijing olympics is performing beijing opera on an international stage. This talk will analyze how this metaphor is manifested multimodally, i.e. through visual and aural as well as verbal discourse. The talk will also offer a linguistic perspective on the Chinese cultural model for understanding various aspects and events of life. At the core of this cultural model is the widespread life is a stage metaphor, which has a specific manifestation within the Chinese cultural context.

October 7
Li Xiaobing 李小兵, Director, Western Pacific Institute, University of Central Oklahoma
“How China Balances Its Military Modernization and Peaceful Rise”
Military affairs have played an incessant role in China’s “reform and opening.” The Chinese military has experienced both growth and change over the past 30 years.  Scholarship on the Chinese military has largely focused on the question of whether there is a “China threat.”  Based on Chinese sources, we examine the changes in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the new century.  We explore the social and political reasons for change, domestic and international constraints on the implementation of military modernization, and the outcomes of these efforts.  Why does the Chinese military increase its defense budget by double digits every year?  What kind of changes have taken place in the PLA?  And what are the future implications of such developments for the United States and the international community?

November 4
Cai Huajian 蔡华俭 (OU), Fang Xiang 方向 (OSU), and Song Hairong 宋海荣 (OU)
“抵制日货! Implicit Consumer Animosity and Chinese Consumption of Japanese Products”
Consumer boycotts have long been a weapon of political protest in China. As recently as April 2005, huge numbers of anti-Japanese protestors in China pledged to boycott Japanese products the next month. But the May boycott largely fizzled. Does the animosity between nations impact actual consumer behavior? The present study validated implicit animosity as a unique determinant of consumer behavior in the context of Chinese animosity toward Japan. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was employed to measure implicit Chinese animosity toward Japan. The results showed that 1) implicit animosity was distinct from consumer ethnocentrism, 2) implicit animosity was significantly correlated with war animosity, but not with economic animosity, and 3) implicit animosity exerted negative impacts on purchase intentions, independent of explicit animosity, consumer ethnocentrism, and product judgment. Taken together, these findings provided initial evidence of discriminant, convergent, and predictive validity for implicit animosity, highlighting the importance of taking implicit animosity into account in future animosity research.

Spring 2009 Schedule

Febuary 4
Liu Yuanling 刘元玲, visiting scholar, Renmin University of China, School of International Relations
“‘Going Out’: China’s Pursuit of Natural Resources and its Implications for Sino-American Relations”
China’s “Going Out” Energy Strategy was implemented in the context of the development of China’s economy, politics, and society. It was also a result of globalization. China’s “Going Out” Energy Strategy has many characteristics which include the signal actors, the business strategic thinking, high pressure, and risk. The “Going Out” energy strategy has a significant impact on Chinese energy diversification, and increases China’s influence in international energy markets. Meanwhile, China’s “Going Out” energy strategy entails vulnerability to external energy markets, with implications for Sino-American relations. Therefore, how to balance the advantages and disadvantages of China’s “Going Out” strategy, and deal with the related risk of Sino-American relations is a serious challenge for China.

[March 4 no talk due to Mo Yan visit and Newman Prize for Chinese Literature conference ]

April 1
Garret Olberding 歐經朋, Assistant Professor of History
“How Did Ministers Err?:  The Use of Facts in Early Han Address”
Much of recent analysis on the contents of early Chinese ministerial addresses to the autocrat centers around the minister’s attention to and use of canonical sources, whether as an indication of the use of ritualized norms (禮) or a logic of signs.  This paper will take a different tack in the study of ministeral address by evaluating the types of evidence the addresses marshalled to shape public policy debates.  Focusing on those Former Han addresses relating to military affairs, such as Zhao Chongguo’s address to Emperor Xuan, my analysis will speak specifically to the ways in which error or “fault” was discussed in the court setting and how such might point to the standards by which a minister’s presented evidence could be taken to be flawed or mistaken.  The interest of this paper is not merely to describe the court environment but also to carefully evaluate the general standards of evidence used in the early Han.

Fall 2008 Schedule

September 3
Todd Sandell, Associate Professor of Communications
“I bought a bride: Advertising and the perception of Taiwan’s Foreign Brides”
As Taiwan has liberalized its politics and economy, and opened its borders to the world, one unanticipated effect has been the rise in transnational marriages, notably marriages between Taiwanese men and Southeast Asian or Chinese (PRC) women. The number of so-called “foreign brides” has reached nearly 400,000, meriting some to call them “Taiwan’s fifth ethnic group.” While many of these women came to know their husbands through personal contacts, or from contacts with Taiwanese men who went abroad for business, most were introduced through professional marriage brokers. This was facilitated in part by advertisements which were placed on billboards, newspapers, and cable television stations. However, a law passed in 2004 banned advertising for women from mainland China, as it was claimed that women should not be advertised as a “commodity” on a level with other products. A second law was passed in 2007 that put further limits on marriage brokerage agencies and restricted advertisements. This talk will discuss the discourse around matchmaking advertisements. It will explain reasons for banning such types of advertisements. It will also present findings from a study of transnational families in Taiwan, funded by the Fulbright Foundation, that explores how advertising affects the perceptions of foreign brides in Taiwan.

October 1
Peter Gries 葛小伟, Director, OU Institute for US-China Issues
Partisanship and American Attitudes towards China
It is well known that the elite politicians within the Democratic and Republican Parties are both internally divided on China. Much less is known, however, about how the political orientations and affiliations of typical Americans impacts their perceptions of China’s rise, attitudes towards the Chinese government, prejudice towards the Chinese people, and preferred US China policies. National opinion polls have generally lacked a sufficient quantity of nuanced questions about attitudes towards China to discern any impact of political orientation. Based on our own surveys, we find that political orientation does indeed impact American views of China. Self-reported “conservatives” perceive significantly greater threat in China’s rise, hold more negative views of the Chinese government, exhibit more prejudice towards the Chinese people, and advocate a much tougher US China policy than self-reported “liberals” do. In terms of party affiliation, Republicans perceive significantly greater threat from China and advocate tougher China policies than Democrats do, but party affiliation had no impact on prejudice scores. Simultaneous multiple regressions including education, gender, and age revealed that while each had an impact on American views of China, that impact was negligible compared to the impact of political orientation.

November 5
Tze-yue G. Hu, Adjunct Lecturer, OU SIAS
Letter from China: ‘First Eastern Animated Feature Film – Princess Iron Fan’
At the height of the Second World War, China’s pioneer animators, the Wan brothers created an animated feature film, Princess Iron Fan which surprisingly became very popular in Japan. This presentation discusses a recently discovered letter written by the Wan brothers at the request of the Japanese animation fans in September 1941. Ironically, the film contains a subtle anti-Japanese message and yet, it was and still is a highly popular film in Japanese memory. What are the contents of the letter? In what state of mind did the Wan brothers write the letter? The presentation also uses music ethnologist, Glenn M. Hudak’s theoretical analysis in Sound Identities (1999) in interpreting the issue of art and culture appreciation vis-à-vis the film, Princess Iron Fan (1941)

Spring 2008 Schedule

February 6
Elena Songster, Assistant Professor of History
“Panda Diplomacy: Animal Ambassadors, the World, and the Wild”
The People’s Republic of China began offering state-gift pandas to non-socialist countries in 1972 after President Nixon’s visit. This short-lived, but highly popular trend was very effective in assisting the normalization of relations between China and the international community. The use of giant pandas as animal ambassadors, however, had a negative impact on the wild panda population and provoked new PRC wildlife policy during the 1970s. Panda diplomacy continues to reenter the world news as China attempts to find new ways to negotiate its tense relations with Taiwan and respond to the crescendo of cries from environmentalists. Through panda diplomacy I will examine China’s relationship with its own wilderness and China’s place in the world.

March 5
Jonathan Stalling, Assistant Professor of English
“Ernest Fenollosa: Buddhism, Classical Chinese Poetics, and the Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry.”
Ernest Fenollosa’s ‘The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry,’” is considered by many to be the most important poetry manifesto of the Twentieth Century and certainly the most important document in East-West literary criticism in the last century. Yet Fenollosa’s name is nearly a dirty word in Sinology due to his misguided notions of Chinese characters. Yet in this talk I will discuss my recent archival discoveries which include the missing half of the essay to show that Fenollosa was far more knowledgeable about Chinese poetics than previously thought.

April 2
Ruan Jiening 阮杰宁, Associate Professor, Literacy/Reading Education; Director, OU Reading Clinic
“Curriculum Reform in Basic Education in China.”
This presentation will address some key components in the curriculum reform recently implemented in basic education in China.  Issues related to curriculum structures, standards, materials, and assessments will be discussed. 

Fall 2007 Schedule

September 5
Gui Mingchao 桂明超, Associate Professor of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics 
“Are all Chinese dialects really Chinese?”
Based on the unique and peculiar features of many so-called Chinese dialects, some scholars have recently challenged the traditional classification of these dialects.  It is intended in this presentation to give an overview of all the major arguments including the presenter's own stand and personal viewpoint. 

October 3
Mark Frazier, ConocoPhillips Professor of Chinese Politics & Associate Professor of International and Area Studies
“Popular Attitudes toward China’s New Welfare State”
Mark Frazier discusses his research on how urban Chinese citizens view the transformation in China’s social safety net, especially regarding pensions and retirement. 

November 7
Luo Yiqi 骆亦骐, Professor of Ecology, Department of Botany and Microbiology
“Deserts and Desertification in China”
Desertification has rapidly developed in the past 50 years in Northern China, covering an area of 385,700 square km by 2000, affecting nearly 170 million people, and causing direct and indirect economic losses of about USD $6.75 billions per year. I will present evidence demonstrating that human activities guided by policy shifts have been a major force driving eolian desertification via changes in land-use patterns and intensity. It follows that the desertification can be curbed or even reversed by adopting prevention and control measures with ecologically sound land-use practices in China.