Changing, Challenging China: A Harvard Magazine Roundtable

In mid March, Harvard Business School and the Harvard China Fund will formally inaugurate a substantial center in Shanghai—one of the University’s largest international facilities—to support faculty research, visiting students, and teaching programs. Given this tangible evidence of the University’s academic engagement with one of the world’s most important and dynamic countries, Harvard Magazine at year-end invited seven faculty and alumni experts to discuss China’s history, culture, and contemporary challenges:

Mark Elliott is the Mark Schwartz professor of Chinese and Inner Asian history. He focuses on the Qing dynasty and the historic and continuing relations between China and Inner Asia.

William Kirby, T. M. Chang professor of China studies, Spangler Family professor of business administration, director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, and chairman of the Harvard China Fund, is an historian of modern China, and of contemporary Chinese business history and organization.

Arthur Kroeber ’84 has lived in Asia since 1987, served as correspondent of the Economist Intelligence Unit for a decade, and is now a Beijing-based managing director of Dragonomics, an economics research and advisory firm.

Evan Osnos ’98 is the New Yorker correspondent in Beijing.

Deborah Seligsohn ’84, based in Beijing, is principal adviser to the World Resources Institute China Climate and Energy Program.

Edward Steinfeld ’88, Ph.D. ’96, an associate professor in the department of political science at MIT, directs the MIT-China program and is co-director of the China Energy Group. His new book, Playing Our Game: Why China’s Rise Doesn’t Threaten the West, is forthcoming from Oxford.

Xiaofei Tian, professor of Chinese literature, specializes in early medieval Chinese literature and cultural history. She has also published on late imperial China and modern Chinese literature and culture.