Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power

Abstract

Professor Howard French, Professor of Journalism, Columbia Journalism School - Professor French will discuss how patterns of Chinese interactions with nearby cultures throughout the long dynastic era have shaped present-day Chinese reflexes and expectations in dealing with other countries. He will speak, in particular, to the influence of the so-called tribute system, about the impact of modern Chinese nationalism and of a carefully cultivated sense of resentment toward other powers. The talk will conclude with a discussion of how these factors affect US-China relations, and with the author's sense of how great power relations may develop in the next decade or two.