The rising digital surveillance system in China attracts attentions from the world. In this talk, based on the detailed information of newly utilized government procurement contracts, Professor Pinghan Liang will introduce some ongoing quantitative works about the features, the motivations and social impact of China's public surveillance system. The talk will attempt to answer the following questions: Why did local governments procure surveillance cameras? Which government departments are the main buyers?

Digitisation is transforming the organisation and global geography of industries, with the emergence of global modular ecosystems. This talk focuses on the smartphone industry over the past two decades and explains how new forms of organisation in the global economy complicate the process of decoupling. Although Chinese firms have carved out a dominant role in this industry, it is difficult for any country to become completely independent of the global system. From a policy perspective, interdependence through massive modularity makes decoupling both attractive and at the same time risky.

In this presentation Dr Chabrowski will address three main themes developed in his recent book, Ruling the Stage: Social and Cultural History of Opera in Sichuan from the Qing to the People’s Republic of China (Brill, 2022). Firstly, he will discuss the changing social role of opera in Sichuan across the last two centuries, underlining its role in the (broadly conceived) social welfare of the rural and urban communities. Secondly, Dr Chabrowski will focus on the fundamental role of opera in transmitting 'traditional' culture into the modernizing urban environment of the early 20th century.

How is China acquiring global influence? In this talk, Richard Carney will show how autocracies with heavy control over the corporate sector and clientelist systems are most attracted to Chinese infrastructure spending and then in turn import more technology from China and become enmeshed in China’s own technical standards regime. Carney will explore how the spread of infrastructure, technology and political influence are interconnected and all contribute to China’s growing influence on the global stage.

Despite extensive media coverage of the technological capabilities of China's surveillance state, we know relatively little about its organization and operational tactics. By combing through official documents, this talk presents a picture of China's surveillance state that sharply contrasts its portrayal in the media. The most important factor that makes China's surveillance state so fearsome is not its technological capabilities, but the Communist Party's unrivalled organizational capacity.

This talk will examine the historical evolution of Japanese perspectives on the US‒Japan security alliance’s and the Japan Self-defense Forces’ (SDF) potential roles in the event of a 'Taiwan contingency'.

Does Hong Kong matter to International Relations (IR) as a discipline? Unlike most former colonies, people in Hong Kong were deprived of the chance to decide their future when the colonial rule came to an end. The agreement between the UK and the People’s Republic of China creates a gap between ‘international’ and ‘politics’ for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

A presentation of the EMI report on Emerging Markets Multinationals from China will be given by Lourdes Casanova and Anne Miroux.

Lourdes Casanova, Senior Lecturer and Gail and Roberto Cañizares Director of the Emerging Markets Institute, SC Johnson School of Management, Cornell University, has been named as one of the 50 most influential Iberoamerican intellectuals and one of the 30 most influential Iberoamerican women intellectuals by Esglobal. She has been a Fulbright Scholar, and received a Masters from University of Southern California and a PhD from University of Barcelona.

The Chinese state owned enterprise (CSOE) presents an anomaly in the operation of the well-ordered construction of a self-referencing and closed system of liberal democratic internationalism, especially as that system touches on business responsibilities under national and international human rights and environmental law and markets driven norms.

The significant changes that have taken place in China over the past 100 days raise important questions about its political future and foreign relations. Since the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2022 we have witnessed the consolidation of Xi Jinping’s central authority, the breakdown of collective political leadership, protests on the streets, and a total reversal of zero-Covid restrictions that few predicted, either inside or outside of China. Informed by on the ground experience in Beijing, this talk will reflect on these recent developments.