China today seems caught in a contradiction: a capitalist state led by a Communist party. But as Market Maoists shows, this seeming paradox is nothing new. Since the 1930s, before the Chinese Communist Party came to power, Communist traders and diplomats have sought deals with capitalists in an effort to fuel political transformation and the restoration of Chinese power. For as long as there have been Communists in China, they have been reconciling revolutionary aspirations at home with market realities abroad.
Jason Kelly unearths this hidden history of global commerce, finding that even Mao Zedong saw no fundamental conflict between trading with capitalists and chasing revolution. China’s ties to capitalism transformed under Mao but were never broken. And it was not just goods and currencies that changed hands. Sustained contact with foreign capitalists shaped the Chinese nation under Communism and left deep impressions on foreign policy. Deals demanded mutual intelligibility and cooperation. As a result, international transactions facilitated the exchange of ideas, habits, and beliefs, leaving subtle but lasting effects on the values and attitudes of individuals and institutions.
Drawing from official and commercial archives around the world, including newly available internal Chinese Communist Party documents, Market Maoists recasts our understanding of China’s relationship with global capitalism, revealing how these early accommodations laid the groundwork for China’s embrace of capitalism in the 1980s and after.
“Celebrating the 600th Anniversary of the Forbidden Cityâ€
a talk & dinner with Matthew Hu, founder of The Courtyard Institute
WHAT: “Celebrating the 600th Anniversary of the Forbidden Cityâ€, a talk & dinner with Matthew Hu, founder of The Courtyard Institute WHEN: February 3, 2020, Wednesday 6-9:30PM WHERE: The Courtyard Institute & Black Sesame Kitchen, #28 Zhonglao Hutong, Dongcheng district, Beijing
MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Matthew was the founding Managing Director of the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center (CHP), and the former China Representative of The Prince’s Charities Foundation (China). In 2014, he co-founded The Courtyard Institute with a few friends, aiming at promoting a better understanding of Chinese heritage through education.
HOW MUCH: 300 RMB for RASBJ members (350 RMB for non-members)
RSVP: RASBJ members please wechat payment to Treasurer John Olbrich at johnobeijing with participants’ full names. Seating is limited to 15 RASBJ members; reservations will be confirmed upon receipt of payment. (Non-members please contact Black Sesame Kitchen directly at 136 9147 4408.)
NOTE: This event’s co-hosts are the Royal Asiatic Society Beijing (RASBJ), the Courtyard Institute, and Black Sesame Kitchen SCHEDULE: 6-6:30 PM Meet-and-greet reception featuring an open bar of house beer and soft drinks. Wine and craft beer will be available at additional charge. 6:30-7:30 PM Matthew Hu’s presentation on the Forbidden City, with ppt. 7:30-9:30 PM Dinner at Black Sesame Kitchen.
“The Monsoon- past, present and future” by Prof. Peter Clift
WHAT: “The Monsoon- past, present and future” by Prof. Peter Clift. RASBJ Zoom talk followed by Q&A WHEN: January 20, 2021, Wednesday 9.00 PM Beijing Standard Time NOTE: THIS ZOOM EVENT BEGINS AT 9PM BEIJING TIME
Prof Clift will launch his book “Monsoon Rains, Great Rivers and the Development of Farming Civilisations in Asiaâ€, explaining variations in the Asian monsoon since the mid-Holocene, and its impacts on farming systems and human settlement. He will also discuss the impact of future changes to the monsoon due to global climate change.
MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Peter Clift is Professor of Geology at Louisiana State University, following periods of study and teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Bremen, Texas A&M, Woods Hole, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His wide areas of special expertise and publication include the Asian monsoon and the origin of the continental crust.
HOW MUCH: This event is free and exclusively for members of the RASBJ and other RAS branches. If you know someone who wants to join the RASBJ in order to attend this talk, please ask them to sign up via our website at https://rasbj.org/membership/ at least 48 hours before the event.
Time to tackle that old trope of ‘Shenzhen as a former fishing village…’ So time to tell the story of Shumchun, a city of 300,000 that was known as the Monte Carlo of the East in the 1930s and was certainly something more than a ‘fishing village’. Here from the South China Morning Post Weekend Magazine….
I’m not always sure people are aware that the RAS runs a great and accesible library of China books and sources in Shanghai right there on the Bund….
The RAS China library houses a lovely collection of bookson China and Asia in English, some rare archival materials as well as the old journals published by the North China Branch of RAS that existed in Shanghai from 1857-1953. The library is on the 3rd floor of The House of Roosevelt on the Bund, in a room dedicated to the memory of Florence Ayscough, an extraordinary woman who was RAS librarian from 1907 to 1922. The library is a wonderful setting for study and research and to host some of our more smaller scale events.
The library is accessible to our members and guests during open hours as published on our website. Information on how to become a member is available at https://lnkd.in/gGtpxi2
Joan Robinson was a member of the famous Keynes Circus of young economists at Cambridge in the 1930’s. She was a theorist par excellence, making outstanding contributions to the understanding of competition, aggregate demand and capital. At the same time, she developed an interest in underdeveloped economies and alternatives to capitalism that eventually produced a long list of writings on China between the 1950’s to the 1970’s. These writings were neither theoretical nor empirical, but a series of opinion pieces and reports. Yet it is these writings that arguably cost Joan Robinson the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics.
This short book reviews those writings and comments on what has happened since with regard to China’s development, Joan Robinson’s interpretation and predictions, and how her 1950’s lectures in China match up to China’s policies since Mao.
Fear not, Peking Noir will available on BBC Sounds, Spotify and iTunes next week but if you want to listen to the whole thing in one uncut go then it’s on BBC Radio 3 at 7.30pm on Sunday 10/1/21. Some advance praise…
My true-crime docudrama (written with Sarah Wooley and produced by Sasha Yevtushenko) for BBC Radio, Peking Noir, will be on BBC Radio 3 beginning at 19:30 on Sunday 10th January. As well as on-air there’ll be an extended six-part podcast series version of the programme going live on the Drama of the Week stream on BBC Sounds, Spotify and iTunes shortly after the BBC Radio 3 broadcast.
Presented by Paul French Drama written by Sarah Wooley
Whatever anyone declared categorically about Shura Giraldi, someone else insisted on the exact opposite. Shura was handsome and beautiful; Shura was kind and good, Shura was exploitative and evil. Shura was just another struggling White Russian refugee trying to get by in 1930s China; Shura was the heart and brains of a gang that ran clubs, sex workers, illicit booze and drugs, when not robbing banks and stealing gems to fence in Shanghai. Shura loved ballet and cabaret, creating the Shura Giraldi Dance Troupe that topped the bill at all the best Peking nightclubs.
Shura sometimes presented as male and sometimes as female. When passing as a man Shura bound his breasts tightly and wore a sharp tailored suit; when she was a woman she wore startlingly coloured robes, both Chinese-style cheongsam and Western dresses, letting her raven hair flow loose, said witnesses. Shura had added an incredibly massive layer of confusion and obfuscation to anyone looking by changing gender. Switching for anonymity, for commercial gain or criminal advantage, for love, for a whim.
Paul French is a historian and writer who focuses on China in the first half of the 20th century. He’s been on Shura’s trail for 15 years, digging through the paper records and archives in half a dozen countries in an attempt to get to grips with the enigma that was Shura. This story, a product of that tireless research, is full of truths, but like an old jigsaw brought down from the attic after decades, there are many pieces missing. So we’re using drama, written by Sarah Wooley, to conjure and join the dots of Shura’s story, and go in search of a lost life and a forgotten world.
The search will take us from a Russian far east in violent revolution, to the chaos of the mass emigration of the White Russians, to the crowded hutongs of Peking; from that city’s nightclubs and cabarets, to the casinos of Shanghai; from a China wracked by rampaging warlordism, invaded by Japan, and then fighting its own civil war that culminated in its own revolution.
Shura saw it all; Shura lived through it all; Shura, in part, explains it all.
Shura . . . . . Maggie Bain Zaichek . . . . . Leo Wan Roy . . . . . Daniel York Loh Leopard . . . . . Chris Lew Kum Hoi Tatiana . . . . . Charlotte East Anton . . . . . Luke Nunn Marie . . . . . Cecilia Appiah Saxsen . . . . . Ian Dunnett Jnr The MC . . . . . Roger Ringrose Anna . . . . . Jane Whittenshaw
