Organizers:

Division of Social Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)

Co-sponsored by The French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC)

Abstract:

This special issue of China Perspectives focuses on mass and grassroots organisations as important yet ambiguous intermediaries in the Chinese political system – as mediators, social service providers, administrative staff – and analyses recent reforms of these organisations under the Xi government.

Introduction of the special issue by Judith Audin, CEFC researcher and chief-editor of China Perspectives

Discussants:

Prof. Yongshun Cai, HKUST
Yongshun Cai is chair professor in the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. His research interests include social movements and contentious politics and Chinese politics. He is the author of The Occupy Movement in Hong Kong (2016).

Prof. Edmund Cheng, CityU
Edmund W. Cheng, Associate Professor, Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include contentious politics, political sociology, public opinion, Hong Kong politics, and Global China. His research has appeared in China Quarterly, China Journal, Mobilization, Political Studies, and Social Movement Studies.

Prof. David Palmer, HKU
David A. Palmer is an Associate Professor in the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. He is best known for his award-winning books Qigong fever: Body, science and utopia in China (Columbia, 2007) and The religious question in modern China (co-authored with V. Goossaert, Chicago, 2011). Among his current research projects, he investigates volunteer movements under Chinese neo-socialism. His latest publications on this theme include The Civil Sphere in East Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2019; co-edited with Jeffrey Alexander, Agnes Ku and Sunwoon Park), and forthcoming articles in Current Anthropology and Economy and Society.

Several articles are on open access on the CEFC website: here

All interested are welcomed, no reservation is required.

The presentation will be in English.  The journal will be available in the event

For more information of the seminar, please also visit the page of HKUST: here