History, Identity & Collective Memory: In Search of Modern China
This two-day symposium on 29 & 30 June aims to bring scholars/experts from a variety of disciplines/cultural backgrounds together to critically examine key features of Chinese nationalism.
Date & Time:
29 June 08.45 -16.30
30 June: 9.45 - 12.30
The symposium is sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan; Leiden University Institute for Area Studies; Modern East Asia Research Centre; International Institute for Asian Studies.
Convenor:
Prof. Jui-sung Yang, IIAS Professor, Holder of the European Chair of Taiwanese Studies, the Netherlands/ National Chengchi University, Taiwan
Why in 2011, when the people around the world were startled by the news that China has overtaken Japan as the world second-biggest economy, did the Chinese government commemorate exultantly the centenary of the 1911 revolution and proclaim confidently that the CCP is the only true inheritor of Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary legacy? And why on October 1, 2009, during the 60th anniversary celebration of the founding of the People's Republic of China in Beijing, did the national flag guard team perform an unusual ceremony: a march of 169 goose steps, starting from the People's Heroes Monument, to escort the PRC national flag to the Tiananmen Square? Many news media pay much attention to China’s economic miracle and often praise contemporary China as a successful story of the realization of the widely shared pragmatism and as a modern nation no longer under the shadow of its imperial past or its modern vicissitudes. However there are many signs indicating that the “new China,” while “looking forward” economically, has kept “looking back” to redefine its modern significance by reinterpreting history and manipulating collective memory. The phenomenon becomes more significant due to the fact that nationalism/patriotism has now virtually replaced Marxism as the official ideology justifying the legitimacy of the party-state system, making history and collective memory even more important than ever from the perspectives of the CCP and many Chinese intellectual elites.
This symposium aims to bring scholars/experts from a variety of disciplines/cultural backgrounds together to critically examine key features of Chinese nationalism; especially focusing on how history, identity and collective memory issues are interpreted, constructed and appropriated in the nation building process of modern China.
See the attachment below for the programme and abstracts.