The essays assembled in this volume have been contributed by long-standing collaborators, colleagues and friends and also by some of Achim Mittag’s former students. The contributors are from Germany, the Netherlands, North America, China, and Taiwan, who came to know Achim Mittag through conferences, research projects, and sustained scholarly conversations, as well as through the daily university work, and they all have enriched his life and academic career. If one reads the 29 articles contributed by altogether 30 contributors attentively, one will find that most of them discuss topics that Achim Mittag himself has already explored in one way or another and that the authors explicitly refer to these talks or publications. What holds the contributions together is a shared interest: a curiosity to know more than was hitherto known or thought, and to scrutinize a detail that turns out to be a piece of the puzzle that makes up the bigger picture.

The contributors to this volume are, in alphabetical order: Patrick Aberle, Elisabeth Biebl, Cao Jin, Jan de Meyer, Anno Dederichs, Sebastian Demuth, Emily Graf, Qijin Han, Martin Hanke, Fei Huang, Alexander Jost, Thomas H.C. Lee, Jürgen Leonhardt, Christine Moll-Murata, Michael Nylan, Jörn Rüsen, Hermann-Josef  Röllicke, Dorothee Schaab-Hanke, Philip Scherer, Jonas Schmid, Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer, Angela Schottenhammer, Gunter Schubert, Barend ter Haar, Ulrich Theobald, Hoyt Tillman, Hans van Ess, Hans Ulrich Vogel, Wang Weijiang, Zhang Zhirui

Tuesday, 21 July 2026, 16:00
Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 30
Online Zoom Meeting ID: 936 0056 4476 Passcode: 928919

July 17 (Friday) 12:15noon

From the Bluebird Action to the Great Recall Campaign: Taiwan’s Recent Political Mobilization

Keplerstr. 2, Room 0.81

Zoom Meeting ID: 972 0409 2592 PW: 503031

July 20 (Monday) 4:15pm

Making Reforms in Taiwan: Social Movements, Political Parties, and the Logic of Coalition Building

Keplerstr. 2, Room 003

Zoom Meeting ID: 918 4628 7835 PW: 12345

Ming-Sho Ho is professor in the department of sociology, National Taiwan University. His research areas include political sociology, social movement, labor and environmental issues. He published Be Water: Collective Improvisation in Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Protests (2025), Challenging Beijing’s Mandate of Heaven: Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement (2019), and Working Class Formation in Taiwan: Fractured Solidarity in State-Owned Enterprises (2014). Currently, he is engaged in a book-writing project on how Taiwan's social movements and political parties jointly shaped the policy reforms.

Sovereign AI in an Era of U.S.–China Technological Competition: China's Strategy and Practice

Thurday, 16 July 2026, 14:00 c.t.
Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 62
Online Zoom Meeting ID: 936 0056 4476 Passcode: 928919

Keplerstr. 2, Room 003 and Zoom 918 4628 7835 PW: 12345

4pm sharp

Lin Wei-Yu (National Taiwan University) 

Street-Level Resilience and the Costs of Cross-Agency Performance: Evidence from Taiwan’s Police

5pm sharp

Chen Chung-Hsuan (NCCU, Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies) 

Overseas Chinese Leadership in Myanmar: Navigating Relations with China and Taiwan

Abstract Water buffaloes have long been viewed as the most symbolic animals of Asian peasantry, standing on the other side of modern capitalism. This research project overturns that view by revealing them instead as vital drivers of the early acceleration of capitalist expansion in Asia. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Taiwan and Java, water buffaloes anchored multispecies regimes across diverse socio-ecologies, from smallholdings to plantations and from lowlands to uplands. These regimes produced global commodities for long-distance trade, such as sugar and coffee, drove the unprecedented expansion of commodity frontiers, and reproduced animal labour to sustain this expansion. By tracing this little-known history, the project offers a more-than-human account of capitalism’s global rise, arguing that capitalism was built not only upon specific social relations among humans, but, more fundamentally, upon multiple sets of interspecies relationships among humans and nonhumans.

Bio Xu Guanmian is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Peking University. His research interests encompass capitalism, plantations, animals, the ocean, and the body. He is currently working on two manuscripts: one explores the capitalist past of water buffaloes, while the other examines the Indo-Pacific Ocean as an embodied ecology.

Tuesday, 7 July 2026, 16:00
Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 30
Online Zoom Meeting ID: 936 0056 4476 Passcode: 928919

Tue, 30 Jun 2026, 16:00
Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 30
Online Zoom Meeting ID: 936 0056 4476 Passcode: 928919

Tue, 23 Jun 2026, 16:00
Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 30
Online Zoom Meeting ID: 936 0056 4476 Passcode: 928919

Dr. Sarah Liu (University of Edinburgh, Department of Politics and International Relations)

Abstract When Chinese physicians used their hands in healing rituals, to memorize concepts, to calculate time, and to prognosticate, they deployed their hand as a diagram. Comparable to an excel spreadsheet, the phalangeal divisions of the fingers could pragmatically function for tabulating knowledge. When paper was scarce, expensive, or simply impractical, people could use their hands to exorcize, memorize, recollect, think with, and prognosticate. The earliest extant evidence of using the “hand as diagram” in China is in ritual healing practices documented in the 7th-century medical text Appended Formulas Worth A Thousand Gold (Qianjin yifang, ca. 650s). By the end of the 11th century, two new types of hand-memory and calculation techniques related to Chinese cosmology were recorded in a medical text presented to the Song emperor in 1099. By the early 12th century, the earlier hand-based ritual healing practices were included with further explanation in a major compilation of the Northern Song imperial court (Shengji zonglu, 1117) as well as in an 1152 Buddhist text preserved in the Buddhist Taisho-period Tripitaka (1912-1926). This paper uses these four examples of the hand as diagram from healing rituals to prognostication to illustrate how such visual tu became physically embodied templates of action.

Bio Marta Hanson publishes on the history of medicine in China, early modern Sino-European medical exchanges, and public health in East Asia. Her PhD is in the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania. She was Assistant Professor of late imperial Chinese history at UCSD (1997-2004), then Associate Professor of East Asian medical history at Johns Hopkins University (2004-2021), and is currently the German PI, with Stéphanie Homola as the French PI, for a three-year project funded by the French ANR and DFG on “Knowing Hands: Chinese Hand-memory techniques and handy knowledge in situ, comparison, and contact” (2025-2028). Her book is Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China (2011). She was senior co-editor of Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity (2011-2016), President of the International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (2015-2019), and is currently Vice President of the International Society for the Critical Study of Divination (2023-present).

Tuesday, 16 Jun 2026, 16:00
Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 30
Online Zoom Meeting ID: 936 0056 4476 Passcode: 928919

Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 30
Zoom Meeting ID: 936 0056 4476 Passcode: 928919

Room 003, Keplerstr. 2 or Zoom 918 4628 7835 PW: 12345

All are welcome

Prof. Dr. Johannes Brachtendorf
Poetry and “the Other Beginning” of Philosophy – Heidegger’s Interpretation of Hölderlin's Hymns

Freitag, 22. Mai 2026, 18–20 Uhr c.t.
Alte Aula (Münzgasse 30 · 72070 Tübingen)

Anschließend besteht die Möglichkeit des Austausches bei einem Imbiss.
Organized by the Department of Philosophy in cooperation with China Centre Tübingen (CCT) (both University of Tübingen)

The Beginning: Pluralistic Perspectives in East and West
起初：东西方多元视角探讨
Organized by
Department of Philosophy in cooperation with
China Centre Tübingen (CCT)
(both University of Tübingen)

About the Workshop
The common parlance says that every beginning is hard. What actually constitutes the alleged difficulty in getting started? May it be that apart from objective elements we also must consider subjective or psychological elements? Manifestly, beginnings create a high level of contingency and hence pose great challenges to decision-makers and actors. In coping with these challenges, positive energies are being released. In retrospective, beginnings therefore tend to become fixed stars of identity formation. This is the “magic” that dwells in every beginning, as Hermann Hesse has it. In the Chinese tradition, these magical moments are referred to as “germs” (ji 幾), which we must recognize in order to seize the glittering opportunities in the air. It becomes clear that the notion of beginnings encompass not only such sort of magical thinking, but also manifold questions of cosmology, mythology, ontology, theology, ethics and aesthetics, as well as connotations of spontaneity, autopoiesis and momentum of its own. The exploration of this notion thus provides a useful forum for an interdisciplinary and intercultural debate and critical review of a variety of methodological approaches to such explorations.

In the course of mutual visits of delations from Beijing Normal University and the University of Tübingen in the
recent years, two key areas of advancing the two universities’ cooperation and exchange were identified:
philosophy and educational science, including teachers’ education. To get this cooperation and the exchange
especially among young scholars started, two kick-off workshops on these two areas were agreed upon. Taking
the lead, this workshop features the beginning within the horizon of philosophy.

Flyer Download

Das „HuayuBEST“-Programm ist ein Kooperationsprojekt zwischen der Abteilung  Sinologie der Universität Tübingen und dem Chinese Language Center der National Chung Hsing University, das seit Juli 2025 besteht. Das Programm bietet Studierenden die Möglichkeit, für kurz- oder langfristige Sprachaufenthalte in Taiwan Chinesisch zu lernen. Zudem stehen Stipendien zur Verfügung.

Jede:r Studierende kann wählen, ob er/sie drei, sechs oder bis zu 12 Monate Sprachunterricht an der National Chung Hsing University absolviert. Das monatliche Stipendium beträgt 28.000 NTD, was ungefähr 760 Euro entspricht.

Bewerbungsvoraussetzungen：

1. Studierende der Sinologie
(Bachelorstudierende ab dem 5. Semester bis hin zu Masterstudierenden und Promovierenden)

2. Bereitschaft, 3–12 Monate am Huayu Center der National Chung Hsing University Chinesisch zu lernen: 
Beginn des Frühjahrskurses: Anfang März
Beginn des Sommerkurses: Anfang Juni
Beginn des Sommerkurses: Ende August
Beginn des Sommerkurses: Anfang Dezember

3. Bereitschaft zur Teilnahme am „Hands Together Project“ des Chinese Language Center, bei dem die Teilnehmenden an taiwanischen Grund- und Mittelschulen deutsche Kultur und Geschichte vorstellen.

Während des Aufenthalts organisiert das NCKU Chinese Language Center zudem vielfältige kulturelle und gesellschaftliche Aktivitäten, die den Teilnehmenden Einblicke in Sprache, Alltag und Kultur Taiwans vermitteln.

Für weitere Informationen wenden Sie sich bitte an 马老师 (jun.maspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de)

Rachael Chan (Oxford University, St. John’s College) will talk about Taiwan’s Indigenous Cultural Diplomacy. She is currently pursuing her D.Phil in Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. Prior to her tertiary studies, she served as an administrator and outreach officer at an arts organisation in Singapore, which included collaborations with Taiwanese counterparts. Her interests are at the intersection of political and cultural geography, including decolonial studies, the geographies of cultural diplomacy, and the politics of performance. 

The venue is Keplerstr. 2, Room 003 and on Zoom 918 4628 7835 PW: 12345. 

All are welcome. 

Tuesday, 12 May 2026, 16:00 (4 PM).
Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 30
or Zoom Meeting ID: 936 0056 4476 Passcode: 928919

Abstract Shark fin is often associated with Chinese cuisine as a luxury delicacy. Little is known, however, about its historical trajectory. This talk examines the cultural history of shark fin consumption in Ming and Qing China, tracing its transformation from a marginal marine commodity into a prominent feature of elite dining and social practice. By analysing poems, paintings, gazetteers, medical treatises, cookbooks, and travelogues, this talk will argue that shark fin became one medium through which literati expressed status, taste and cultural value, and understood it in terms of nourishment, rarity, and refinement. In doing so, it places this consumable commodity at the centre of interactions between environment, economy, and culture, and shows how late imperial China’s engagement with the sea shaped everyday practices of consumption.
Bio Dr. Ronald C. Po is an Associate Professor in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of The Blue Frontier: Maritime Vision and Power in the Qing Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Shaping the Blue Dragon: Maritime China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (Liverpool University Press, 2024). His forthcoming monographs include The Silver Thread of the Deep: A Cultural History of Shark Fin in China and Beyond (Harvard University Press, 2026) and The Camphor War: Taiwan in the Age of Imperial Realignments (Columbia University Press, 2026).

Tue, 28 Apr 2026, 16:00, Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 30, or Zoom Meeting ID: 936 0056 4476 Passcode: 928919

Abstract Ink, the pivotal writing material of premodern China, has been widely discussed in terms of calligraphy, painting, collecting, and printing technologies, with an increasing number of studies engaging with its materiality. However, these approaches often isolate ink within literati culture, overlooking the broader trajectories of its ingredients: they derived from various plants and animals with diverse uses beyond writing and art. How ink acquired shifting meanings and cultural values through its making process remains underexplored. This talk examines one such dimension: the use of ink in medicine. Drawing on a wide range of premodern sources, including ink treatises, medical texts, materia medica, technical encyclopaedias, and recipe collections, it shows that ink was understood as a versatile material whose functions extended well beyond the written page. By underscoring its medicinal applications, the paper reconsiders ink as a substance embedded in overlapping domains of art, healthcare, and technology. It highlights the fluid boundaries between artistic and medical practices, adding another good example of the cultural meanings of pigment materials in premodern China.

Bio He Cheng completed her PhD in History at the University of Warwick. Her doctoral research focuses on the evolving concept of “lacquer” in the early modern period, examining its materiality and varied applications. Currently, she is a postdoctoral research fellow at the College of Fellows, University of Tübingen. She is interested in early modern material culture, history of science and medicine, and art history in the global context. Her current research project looks at the cultural history of stones in early modern China and Europe.

Tuesday, April 21: Elisabeth Biebl, M.A. M.Ed. (Tübingen University)
Knowledge About the Unknown: Why Publish a 1000-Year-Old Work in a Time of Striving for Globality?

Tuesday, April 28: HE Cheng, PhD (College of Fellows, Tübingen)
The Pharmaceutical Soot: Ink as Medicine and Pigment in Premodern China

Tuesday, May 12: Prof. Ronald C. Po (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Shark Fin in Late Imperial China: A Cultural History

Tuesday, May 19: Dr Maxim Korolkov (Tübingen University)
The Liye Translation Project: China's Earliest Known Administrative Archive and its Context

Tuesday, June 2: HAN Qiqin, PhD cand. (Tübingen University)
Between Knowledge and Power: The Transmission of the Thermometre and Sino-Western Interaction in the 1680s

Tuesday, June 9: ZHAO Yawei, M.A. (Tübingen University)
Iconographic Analysis and Visual Rhetoric in Fine-Phrase Official Painters' Imperial Tour Painting

Tuesday, June 16: Prof. Marta Hansen (Erlangen University)
Hand as Diagram: Ritual Healing and Prognosticating in Medieval Chinese Medicine

Tuesday, June 23. ZHENG Xinyu, M.A. (Tübingen University)
Distancing from Cold Harm: Reconceptualising yunqi in the Ming Period

Tuesday, June 30: Patrick Aberle, M.A. (Tübingen University)
Oil Trees on Their Journey to the Southwest: Lessons from Folk Documents

Tuesday, July 7: JIANG Qingjun, M.A. (Tübingen University)
Reshaping Masculinities in the Ming-Qing Transition (17-18 Centuries)

Tuesday, July 14: Prof. YI Yolan (National Taiwan University)
title tba

Thursday, July 16: Brian G. Lander (Brown University)
Translating Chinese Texts on Environmental Sources

Tuesday, July 21: HE Zhenghong, M.A. (Tübingen University)
From Medicine to Art: Modelling the Circulation of Blue Pigment (qing 青) Knowledge in Early Modern China

Methods and Tools for the Digital Humanities
Chair: Prof. Dr. Fei HUANG
Dr. Shih-Pei CHEN (Max Planck Institute for History of Science), “Unlocking Asian Studies: Navigating CrossAsia ITR, Data, and AI”
Dr. Hou Ieong (Brent) HO (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin), “Unlocking Asian Studies: Navigating CrossAsia ITR, Data, and AI Research Assistance"

10:40-11:00 Coffee/Tea Break

Individual Presentations & Roundtable Exchange
Chair: Prof. Dr. Fei HUANG
11:00-12:00
Contributors: Dr. Ulrich Theobald, Dr. Maxim Korolkov, Patrick Aberle, Elisabeth Biebl, Zhenghong HE, Xinyu ZHENG, Yawei ZHAO

12:00 Lunch

Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 30
or Online Zoom Meeting ID: 936 0056 4476 Passcode: 928919

Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 31
or Online Zoom Meeting ID: 936 0056 4476 Passcode: 928919

2026-02-04 Wednesday 12 PM - 2 PM 
Keplerstr. 2, Room 0.81 or Zoom Meeting-ID: 965 8047 1951, PW: 12345 

Alex C. Chang is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica. His research examines the development of generalizable political theory through cross-national comparative analysis, while remaining grounded in classical political thought. His substantive interests span democracy and democratization, electoral behavior and public opinion, and political methodology. His work has been published in Democratization, Journal of Democracy, Electoral Studies, Japanese Journal of Political Science, among other leading outlets.

Instagram: @greaterchinastudiestuebingen or www.instagram.com/greaterchinastudiestuebingen/

Facebook: Chair of Greater China Studies at the University of Tübingen or www.facebook.com/GreaterChinaStudiesTuebingen

Chen Pei-Chi (Dep. of Political Science, NTU)
The Impact of Amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures on Taiwan’s Local Public Finance

16 January (Mon) 4-6pm sharp

Keplerstr. 2, Room 0.81 or Zoom 918 4628 7835, PW: 12345 

by Franziska Plümmer (European Studies, University of Amsterdam)

"Chinese migrants in Europe often rely on Chinese language (social) media like WeChat, Little Red Book, or DOLC.de to stay in touch with family & friends, to stay informed about Chinese or European politics, and to exchange information about the host society, its bureaucracies and culture. While language barriers partly explain this reliance, many migrants also actively choose to not use other platforms such as YouTube or local news websites. In our over 30 semi-structured interviews conducted during the winter of 2024/25, our findings suggest that Chinese migrants don’t consider European digital platforms or news websites as appealing. Participants cite entertainment value and awareness of Chinese government influence as key factors shaping their media preferences.

My research explores the following questions: How do migrants choose their media platforms? What role does media socialization in an authoritarian context play in shaping these choices? How do migrants respond to local media initiatives in European host societies? Given that many migrants reference ‘democratic aspirations’ as a motivation for leaving China, how is this reflected in their media choices? Drawing on Foucault’s concept of regimes of truth, the talk investigates what Chinese migrants consider as truth, how they are subjected to those regimes and how they navigate/ resist different regimes."

In this Taiwan Colloquium talk, Prof. Jonathan Sullivan, political scientist and China expert from the University of Nottingham, explores the political implications of influencer culture in Taiwan. 

About the Speaker
Prof. Sullivan has been engaged in China studies since 1996, with academic credentials including degrees in Modern Chinese Studies (University of Leeds), Political Science (University of Nottingham), and a PhD completed in 2010. He is well known for his research on political communications, youth behavior, and foreign policy in the Chinese-speaking world.
Beyond academia, he has collaborated with UK government agencies including the FCDO and maintains active engagement with media platforms as a commentator on China-related affairs.

About the Lecture
In this public lecture, Prof. Jonathan Sullivan will examine how the United Kingdom navigates the delicate balancing act between supporting Taiwan and maintaining its official diplomatic and economic relationship with the People’s Republic of China. Against the backdrop of increasing geopolitical tension and shifting global alliances, the UK’s Taiwan policy has evolved significantly in recent years. Drawing on his expertise in political behavior and cross-Strait relations, Prof. Sullivan will offer insights into the UK's strategic choices and the broader implications for foreign policy and global diplomacy.

About the Speaker

Prof. Sullivan’s research covers a wide range of topics, including:
Political communication and behavior in China
Cross-Strait relations and foreign policy
The intersection of popular culture and politics
In addition to his academic work, he has been actively engaged with government bodies, including an ESRC-funded collaborative project with the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). He frequently contributes commentary and analysis to international media outlets and was previously a British Science Association Media Fellow, which enabled him to work with the BBC.

Trailor:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA6wNTbjQK8

Further details can be found on the ERCCT website: www.ercct.uni-tuebingen.de

If interested, please sign up at mjeu.org/eventlist.

Bio Shi Hongshuai is a professor and doctoral advisor at the Institute for the Study of Northwest Historical Environment and Socio-Economic Development at Shaanxi Normal University. He also serves as a member of the Historical Geography Committee of the Geographical Society of China and as president of the Xi’an Historical Geography Society. He has been a visiting scholar at Central Washington University (USA), Gakushuin University (Japan), and the Needham Research Institute at the University of Cambridge (UK). He has led and completed multiple research projects, including those funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China and major projects of the Ministry of Education’s research bases. His publications have received more than ten awards, including the Second Prize for Outstanding Achievements in Philosophy and Social Sciences of Shaanxi Province and the First Prize for Outstanding Social Science Achievements of Xi’an.

Dienstag, 9. Dezember 2025, 16 Uhr, c.t.
Online Veranstaltung
V ooV/Tengxun ID: 687-082-826

Bio Joan Judge is professor of history at York University. She is the author and coeditor of several books, including, Republican Lens: Gender, Visuality, and Experience in the Early Chinese Periodical Press.

Dienstag/Tuesday, 2 Dezember 2025, 16 Uhr c.t.
Hybrid-Veranstaltung Präsenz in Wilhelmstraße 133, Raum 30
Zoom ID: 936 0056 4476, Passcode: 928919

Colloquium History and Culture of China

Tue, 25 Nov 2025, 16:00 c.t.
Wilhelmstr. 133, R. 30

Date: Wednesday, 10 December 2025
Time: 12:00 – 14:00
Location: Room 081, Keplerstr. 2

Wednesday Zoom sessions - Meeting-ID: 965 8047 1951 PW: 12345 

Abstract Disasters are remembered and narrated not only for their catastrophic impacts on individuals, communities, and societies, but also for the existential fear they engender. Consequently, negative perceptions and destructive imaginaries of disaster tend to be transmitted, shaped, and sedimented across generations. Yet a historically grounded reflection on recurrent catastrophes reveals a counterintuitive insight: suffering has repeatedly catalyzed socio-spatial development and institutional innovation. In other words, episodes of collective rupture often accompany phases of stepwise historical advancement.Viewed differently, while disasters inflict multi-scalar damage in an anthropocentric world, they simultaneously accelerate capacities for preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery, in humans and - indirectly - other living beings. The trajectory and direction of human societal development have, to a considerable degree, been propelled by such crisis-induced learning. From a cultural-historical standpoint, existential threat frequently unlocks novel creativity driven by survival imperatives. The forging of institutions, technologies, and engineering practices “in and through disaster, ” the formation and strengthening of collective cohesion, and the enrichment and rearticulation of disaster cultures together constitute the constructive consequences of catastrophe at the objective level. This perspective reframes disaster not as a solely destructive force, but as a historically recurrent driver of adaptive transformation.

Bio Zhou Qiong is a Professor of History and doctoral supervisor at Minzu University of China and a Distinguished Professor at Yunnan University, as well as a Yunling Scholar, Donglu Scholar, and Yunnan Provincial Academic and Technical Leader. Her research focuses on environmental and disaster history, famine and disaster culture, and ecological civilization, especially among ethnic minorities in Southwest China. She leads the NSSFC major project “Disaster Culture Database for Ethnic Minorities in Southwest China” and is the author of Major Natural Disasters and Relief Mechanisms in the Early Qing and Miasma and Ecological Change in Qing-era Yunnan, both included in the National Achievements Library of Philosophy and Social Sciences, with over 90 journal articles to her name. 

Yao Minghui 姚明輝 PhD cand. (Sun Yat-sen University)
Beyond Conflict: The Formation of Local Sacrificial Structures in Ming Dynasty Hangzhou 衝突之外：明代杭州地方祠祀結構的形成" (in Chinese)

The Colloquium will be held on 04.11.2025 at 4:15 pm in room 30 of the Sinology Department (Wilhelmstr. 133, 72074 Tübingen).
Zoom Link: zoom.us/j/93600564476
Meeting-ID: 936 0056 4476
Passcode: 928919
 

Dieses kurze, heitere und traditionelle Theaterstück basiert auf einer Komödie aus der Yuan-Zeit (ca. 1340-1360). Es wird von Studierenden des Programms „Chinesisch als Fremdsprache“ aufgeführt und dient zugleich als sprachlich-handlungsorientierte Übung im Rahmen ihres Spracherwerbs.

Die Handlung erzählt eine humorvolle und romantische Geschichte über eine schicksalhafte Begegnung zwischen einem gelehrten jungen Mann (Li Xuanying) und einer klugen, anmutigen jungen Frau (Ren Meiling). Weil ihr Vater verschuldet ist, wird Meiling zur Hochzeit mit dem bösen Gläubiger gezwungen, die im Kloster nachts stattfinden soll. Dort übernachtet auch zufällig ein junger Student. Durch ein Missgeschick einer Nonne wird versehentlich den beiden jungen Leuten eine gemeinsame „Mandarinenten“-Bettdecke zugeteilt, das Symbol ehelicher Verbundenheit.
Aus dieser komischen Situation entstehen Missverständnisse, die jedoch schließlich zu gegenseitiger Zuneigung und einem glücklichen Ende führen. Der junge Mann und die junge Frau, die sich zuvor nicht kannten, entdecken inmitten des Chaos ihre Seelenverwandtschaft.

14. November 2025, 19:00 Uhr
Brechtbau- Theater
Eintritt erfolgt auf Spendenbasis

Kevin Chen und Monika Li
„Zwischen Welten: Taiwanische Geister in Kevin Chens Geisterdämmerung“,
Wednesday, November 05, 2025, 16:00-18:00 c.t., Seminarraum, China Centrum Tübingen (CCT), Hintere Grabenstr. 26, 72070 Tübingen

Abstract In seinem Buch verwebt Chen persönliche Erfahrungen mit gesellschaftlichen Themen wie Marginalisierung, sexuelle Identität und das Spannungsfeld zwischen Tradition und Moderne. Kevin Chens Roman »Geisterdämmerung« in der Übersetzung von Monika Li bietet Anlass, um über Themen wie kulturelle Identität, familiäre Traumata und transnationale Perspektiven ins Gespräch zu kommen.

Bio Kevin Chen, 1976 in Changua, Taiwan, geboren, begann seine künstlerische Karriere als Filmschauspieler und trat in taiwanischen und deutschen Filmen auf. Heute lebt er in Berlin, spricht deutsch und arbeitet als Autor für die Zeitschrift Performing Arts Review.

For more information please visit:
https://uni-tuebingen.de/forschung/zentren-und-institute/china-centrum-tuebingen-cct/aktuelles/newsfullview-cft/article/kevin-chen-und-monika-li-zwischen-welten-taiwanische-geister-in-kevin-chens-geisterdaemmerung/ 

Tue, Oct 28, 4 PM in a hybrid format, Hintere Grabenstr. 26
Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/93600564476?pwd=WSn7FnZrqiJa5CtgcEEDzNIaurn6kk.1 
Meeting-ID: 936 0056 4476
Passcode: 928919

Abstract Over the past decade, ginseng scholarship has widened across disciplines and languages, opening new directions in East Asian and global history. This lecture traces the field’s shift from institutional analyses to cultural, borderland, and global frames. Since Imamura Tomo’s History of Ginseng (1935), research has moved through three phases: Qing political-fiscal management of the monopoly; the social and medical cultures of consumption; and the global circulation of knowledge, trade, and identity. Early work—exemplified by Van Jay Symons—privileged bureaucracy. In contrast, my Empire of Ginseng (2015) places the plant at the nexus of politics, medicine, and daily life, as both a symbolic commodity in Qing governance and a node in China–Korea–Japan knowledge networks. Drawing on Manchu memorials, palace records, and medical treatises, and engaging Harold Cook and Londa Schiebinger, I show how ginseng linked imperial and bodily politics in the early modern world. A “borderland turn” (New Qing History) further reframed space: Seonmin Kim’s Ginseng and Borderland (2017) demonstrates how the Qing–Chosŏn Changbai frontier became a regulated borderland through mapping, tribute, and surveillance, with trade and smuggling redefining sovereignty. A global turn—Heasim Sul’s A Global History of Ginseng (2022)—situates the plant within imperialism, modernity, and Orientalism, explaining its absence from Western narratives even as Jesuits, the East India Company, and U.S. merchants globalized it and Eurocentric pharmacology dismissed it as “Oriental superstition. ” Together these approaches shift the historiography from national institutions to connected microhistories of material culture and medicine, casting ginseng as a lens on power, knowledge, and belief across empires and highlighting East Asia’s active role in shaping modernity. 
Bio Prof. Chiang Chu-Shan 蔣竹山 is a Professor at the Graduate Institute of History at National Central University, Taiwan. His research focuses on Ming-Qing medical history, new cultural history, global history, and popular historiography. He holds a PhD from National Tsing Hua University and is the author of Empire of Ginseng: Production, Consumption, and Medicine in Qing China (2015).

Nov 4, 2025
YAO Minghui M.A. (Sun Yat-sen University) Beyond Conflict: The Formation of Local Sacrificial Structures in Ming Dynasty Hangzhou 衝突之外：明代杭州 地方祠祀結構的形成

Nov 11, 2025
Prof. ZHOU Qiong (Minzu University of China) (online) Title tbd

Nov 25, 2025
Elisabeth Biebl M.A. (Tübingen University) There is No Animal History without Humanity: The Flora and Fauna of the Shanhai Jing 山海经 in the Context of Human-Animal-Studies

Dec 2, 2025
Prof. Joan Judge (York University) Book Launch, The Politics of Common Reading: Vernacular Knowledge and Everyday Technics in China, 1894–1954

Dec 9, 2025
Prof. SHI Hongshuai (Shaanxi Normal University) (online) Title tba

Dec 16, 2025
Patrick Aberle M.A. (Tübingen University) The Philosophical Underpinnings and Economic Realities of Cultivating Oil Trees in Imperial China

Jan 13, 2026
Qingjun JIANG M.A. (Tübingen University) Reshaping Masculinities in Ming-Qing Transition (17-18th Centuries)

Jan 20, 2026
ZHAO Yawei, B.A. (Tübingen University) The Fine Phrase: Officials' Depictions of the Eastern Imperial Inspection Tour (2 PM, Room 31)
Hua YE, PhD cand. (Hong Kong University) Scramble for Water Exits: Geomantic Space and Lineage Formation in 16th-Century Huizhou– A Case Study on Jixi and Dafan of Eastern Wuyuan County (4 PM, Room 30)

Jan 27, 2026
ZHANG Yiteng, B.A. (Tübingen University) Discourse on the Decline of Ethical Standards during the Han-Wei-Jin Transition (2 PM, Room 31)
ZHENG Xinyu M.A. (Tübingen University) Innovations of the Yunqi Cosmology in Late Imperial China (4 PM, Room 30)

Feb 2, 2026
HE Zhenghong M.A. (Tübingen University) From Medicine Chests to Antiquarian Cabinets: The Collecting Space in Late Imperial China

• Kurze Vorstellung
• Kleiner Vortrag
• Bericht aus Peking (Rückkehrer:innen)
• Bericht über die Taiwan Summer School
• Vorstellung der studentischen Fachschaft
• Kennenlernen
• Austausch
• Individuelle Sprechstunde mit allen Lehrkräften

Ort /Venue: China Centrum Tübingen, Hintere Grabenstr. 26, 72070 Tübingen

Monday, 6 October

09:00 Welcome HUANG Fei & Emily Graf

09:15 – Keynote 1 Paul U. Unschuld (Charité Berlin University)
Beyond Professionalism: A View on the Status of Competence—Past and Present

10:15 Group Photo & Coffee/Tea Break

Medical Curses, Magic and Cosmology

Chair: Achim Mittag (Tübingen University)

10:45 CHANG Chia-feng (National Taiwan University)
Frightened by Strangers: Rethinking of Kewu in Pre-Modern Chinese Medical Literatures

11:25 ZHENG Xinyu (Tübingen University)
More Than Diagrams: Modeling the Cosmos in Medical Primers

12:05 Regula Forster (Tübingen University)
Magical Medicine: Islamic Medicine beyond Galen

12:45 Lunch (Catering on-site)

Healing Waters and Trees

Chair: Carola Lorea (Tübingen University)

14:00 HUANG Fei (Tübingen University)
Knowledge and Local Practice of Healing Springs in Early Modern China

14:40 Christina Brauner (Tübingen University)
Early Modern Spas as Sites of Contested Knowledge: A Small Place in the German-Dutch Borderlands and its Global Connection

15:20 Patrick Aberle (Tübingen University)
Oil Trees in Chinese Materia Medica (bencao)

16:00 Coffee/Tea Break

Integrating the Traditional and Modern

Chair: Karin Polit (Tübingen University)

16:30 XIAO Fulian (Fudan University)
Knowledge and the Frontier: Missionary Investigations and Writings on Local Medicine in Southwest China

17:10 Holger Cramer (Tübingen University)
Translating Traditions: The Integration of Traditional Medicine into the German Healthcare System

17:50 Gabriele Alex (Tübingen University)
Medical Diversity in South India: Practices, Choices, and Social Stratification 

19:00 Dinner: Restaurant Ludwigs, Uhlandstr. 1

Tuesday, 7 October

09:00 – Keynote 2 FANG Xiaoping (Monash University)
Beyond Professionalism within Professionalism: The Actors, Contexts, and Resilience of Folk Health Practices in Mao’s China and After

10:00 Coffee/Tea Break

Medical Pluralism on the Ground

Chair: Nadja Klopprogge (Tübingen University)

10:30 ZHANG Meng (University of Manchester)
Connecting Humans and Animals: The Mask-Muzzle Entanglement and the Vernacularisation of Health Technologies in East Asia (1880–1950)

11:10 Emily Graf (Tübingen University)
Gearing Up with the Bare Necessities: A Material Approach to the Barefoot Doctor’s Medical Equipment (1968–1983)

11:50 SU Jingjing (Peking University)
Reconfiguration of Breastfeeding Recommendations in China: Class Struggle and Politics of Lactation (1966–1976)

12:30 Lunch (Catering on-site)

13:45 General Discussion 

15:15 “Stocherkahn” (punting boat) along the Neckar River

16:00 City Tour

18:00 Dinner

Ein PDF des Bandes kann unter folgender Adresse heruntergeladen werden: https://publikationen.uni-tuebingen.de/xmlui/handle/10900/154169 

Am 30. August 1794 berichtete Fukang’an (1753–1796), Generalgouverneur von Sichuan, dem Qianlong-Kaiser (reg. 1736–1795) über die ungeheuerliche Falschmünzerei, die an einem Ort namens „Alter Rabenhorst“ im Grenzgebiet zwischen Sichuan und Guizhou aufgedeckt worden war. Gesetzesbrecher hatten in dieser abgelegenen Region im Südwesten Chinas Dutzende Öfen und Schuppen errichtet, um dort ihrem illegalen Handwerk nachzugehen. Truppen wurden entsandt, die mehr als 300 Delinquenten festnahmen, wichtige Beweismittel sicherten und die vorgefundenen Werkzeuge und Einrichtungen zerstörten. Es ist dieser spektakuläre Falschmünzerfall, der größte seiner Art in der Qing-Zeit (1644-1911), der im Mittelpunkt der vorliegenden Publikation steht. Es handelt sich dabei um ein Werk, das auf der Grundlage von 47 historischen Primärquellen einerseits als Forschungsmonographie, andererseits als Lehrbuch konzipiert ist. Band 1 geht dezidiert auf die einzelnen Dokumente ein. Zu diesen finden sich nicht nur ausführliche Vokabellisten und genaue Übersetzungen, sondern auch detaillierte Erläuterungen über den Quellentyp und zu den relevanten historischen Umständen und Entwicklungen jener Zeit. Begleitet werden diese durch zahlreiche Abbildungen, Karten, Grafiken, Tabellen und Appendizes.

Bild: Gruppe von Gesetzesbrechern in einem Gefängnis der späten Qing-Zeit. Quelle: www.ilishi.net/html/201008/34227.html (Zugriff 03.09.2020); Abbildung mit freundlicher Genehmigung von „Love for History“ (Ai lishi 爱历史), i.e. www.ilishi.net
 

Title: Mainland Chinese Workers in Hong Kong: Labour Market Integration, Challenges, and Opportunities

Date: 23 July (Wednesday)

Time: 12-14h c.t. 

Venue: Room 036, Keplerstr. 2; or Zoom 987 1722 3673

Julia Fernández García's bio can be found at www.uab.cat/en/translation-interpreting-east-asian-studies/altres-llista-de-doctorands-per-ordre-alfabetic

Her bio can be found at uni-tuebingen.de/forschung/zentren-und-institute/european-research-center-on-contemporary-taiwan/people/short-term-resident-fellows/cavalli-ines-hsiao-man/

The venue is Room 036, Keplerstr. 2. You may also join us on Zoom 987 1722 3673.
 

Tue, 22 Jul 2025, 18:15, online

Brief. India and China, together home to over a third of the global population, stand at a crossroads in determining the future of their agricultural systems amid rising environmental and social pressures. This talk compares the impacts of industrial agriculture with agroecological approaches, which prioritize species and ecosystem diversity, local knowledge, and the preservation of common resources such as seeds and the revival of local markets. Drawing on current policies, case studies, and intensification models, it examines how the incorporation of agrobiodiversity into the food production system, combined with local community involvement, can influence food system resilience and vulnerability. The presentation argues that agroecology offers a more sustainable and equitable path forward in an era of climate uncertainty and resource scarcity.

“Seed Warrior” Dr. Debal Deb founded Basudha (https://cintdis.org/basudha/), a rice conservation farm in India where he has created a living seed bank of 1,400 rare indigenous varieties. His collection boasts of resiliency, with most varieties withstanding drought and flooding, strong changes of weather and soil, and with multiple cultural and medicinal properties.

zoom.us/j/99574353063;
Meeting-ID: 995 7435 3063, Kenncode: 743669
Contact: Divyaraj Amiya, M.Phil. (divyaraj.amiya@uni-tuebingen.de), and Dr. Ulrich Theobald (ulrich.theobald@uni-tuebingen.de)

Dr. Robert Pursche (Zeitgeschichte) und Jun.-Prof. Dr. Emily Graf (Sinologie CCT)

„Zwischen Entweder/Oder: Gustav Seitz, die frühe VR China und das geteilte Nachkriegsdeutschland“

Im Rahmen der Ausstellung “Studienblätter aus China: Gustav Seitz' China in Tusche, Bronze und Fotografie” (1. Juli - 8. August 2025)

China Centrum Tübingen
Hintere Grabenstraße 26, 72070

Topic: The Chinese Video Game Market: Between State Control and Economic Ambition

Date: 16 July 2025 (Wednesday)

Time: 12-14h c.t. 

Venue: Keplerstr. 2, Room 036, or Zoom 987 1722 3673

Chen Wei-chen (Profile: https://uni-tuebingen.de/forschung/zentren-und-institute/european-research-center-on-contemporary-taiwan/people/visiting-fellows/chen-wei-chen/)
The Integration of Infrastructure and Islam: A Comparative Study of Taiwan and Thailand

On-site participation: Keplerstr. 2, Room 036

Zoom meeting ID: 987 1722 3673

Abstract From approximately 982 to 989 CE Zhao Kuangyi (Song Taizong (r. 976-997)) oversaw the construction of the 111-meter tall Kaibao Monastery Sarira Pagoda (Kaibaosi sheli ta) in the Song dynasty imperial capital at Kaifeng (Bianjing). Yet, rather than employing the craftsmen, the first Song dynasty emperor, Zhao Kuangyin (Taizu, r. 960-976), had used to make over the palaces in the manner of those at the Western Capital of Luoyang during the 960s, Zhao Kuangyi selected Yu Hao, the most famous builder of the Wuyue kingdom, to construct his towering Buddhist edifice. Why import a builder from the tiny coastal kingdom to handle such a visible project? In this paper I examine how architecture was used in demonstrating imperial legitimacy and personal power in early Song China. The pattern of building patronage and ritual performance in the first decades of the Song dynasty suggests that much of what characterizes Song visual culture emerged from competition between the first two sibling emperors. In this story, the Kaibao Monastery Pagoda emerges as more than a reliquary, rather it was a tool of Buddhist power, one whose monumental scale helped legitimate patronage of southeastern aesthetics across north China for centuries to come.

Bio: Tracy Miller (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania) is a specialist in the history of Asian art and architecture, especially the ritual architecture of imperial China. Her research focuses on the impact of belief in divinity on the production of art, architecture, and larger spaces for spiritual encounters. She is author of The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci (Harvard University Asia Center) and has recently completed a monograph on the use of Indic and Inner Eurasian design strategies in the Buddhist temple architecture of Early Medieval and Medieval China. Her articles have appeared in The Art Bulletin, Asia Major, Archives of Asian Art, and Artibus Asiae, among other venues. Active in the Digital Cultural Heritage community, Miller is also co-PI of the ATTCAT (Annotation and Translation of Traditional Chinese Architecture Terminology) Project, an international collaborative research initiative dedicated to the study of the technical terminology used to describe traditional Chinese architecture, which is published on the open-source website architecturaainica.org.

Tuesday, 8 July 2025, 16:00 c.t.
Online via  Zoom
Meeting-ID: 936 0056 4476, Kenncode: 928919

Entdecken Sie eine seltene Seite des bekannten Künstlers und seine künstlerische Auseinandersetzung mit China.
Wir freuen uns auf Ihren Besuch!

Öffnungszeiten:
Montag, Mittwoch: 14:00–18:00
Donnerstag, Freitag: 12:00–16:00

Vernissage am 1. Juli 2025, 18:00 Uhr, mit Kurator Lutz Dittrich

Hintere Grabenstraße 26
72070 Tübingen

Venue is Seminar room 0.36 at Keplerstraße 2. You may also join us on Zoom 987 1722 3673

Chinese Ethnic Food Enterprises in the UK: Socio-economic Changes vs. Entrepreneurial Resilience after the Pandemic

“And this is a fascinating topic, because according to the House of Commons Coronavirus: Economic Impact report, published on 17 December 2021, as a result of the pandemic, the GDP of the UK declined by 9.7 per cent in 2020. It was the steepest drop ever since the record of GDP began in 1948. The government already committed £315 billion for the support of households, businesses and public services. Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, UK media covered stories about the mainstream industries and the society. Yet, the social and economic situation of the Chinese diaspora and the general responses of Chinese entrepreneur have rarely been covered. This presentation, therefore, tentatively, tries to fill that gap by looking at Chinese food enterprises (restaurants, takeaways and supermarkets), to examine the social economic impact of the pandemic as well as how the Chinese enterprises respond to the once-in-a-life-time economic tsunami. I will first provide a short history about the general overview of Chinese food enterprises in the UK. Then, I will examine the so-called food chain in the UK with reference to some big names to see the general picture of the Chinese food enterprises in the UK before the pandemic. How does the pandemic change the business practice of Chinese food enterprises in general? Because of the multiple lockdowns, how did the Chinese food enterprises adapt to the decrease of consumers eating out during the pandemic and the decline of footfall of shoppers? I will further use some new statistics of Wing Yip, the largest supermarket in the UK, to examine the performance before and after the pandemic to showcase the economic challenges. This unprecedented pandemic will test the Chinese diasporic businesses in the UK. Their responses and ways of adaptation will certainly provide some transferrable lessons for understanding Chinese diaspora’s ethnic food, entrepreneurship, and the meaning of resilience.”

23 June
Monday 16 – 18
Prof. Gordon Cheung (Taiwan Colloquium)
From Cold War Island to Museum of Peace?: Kinmen in Cross-strait Relations
 

14 July
Monday 16 – 18 (sharp!)
Lin Chia-Yi (Taiwan Colloquium)
Taiwan's Semiconductor Supply Chain Strategy under Global Economic Security
Chen Wei-chen (Taiwan Colloquium)
The Integration of Infrastructure and Islam: A Comparative Study of Taiwan and Thailand

16 July
Wednesday 12 – 14
Lukas Eggert (Research Colloquium)
The Chinese Video Game Market: Between State Control and Economic Ambition
 

21 July
Monday 16 – 18
Inès Hsiao-Man Cavalli (Taiwan Colloquium)
Thinking about the nation in Taiwan: discourses and representations amongst the Kuomintang's new generations (2008-2022)
 

23 July
Wednesday 12 – 14
Julia Fernández García (Research Colloquium)
Mainland Chinese Workers in Hong Kong: Labour Market Integration, Challenges, and Opportunities

Tuesday, April 29: (via zoom)
    Dr. Bill Hayton (Chatham House)
    Uncovering the Origins of China’s Territorial Claims in the South China Sea
Tuesday, May 6:
    Patrick Aberle M.A. (Tübingen University)
    Divergences of Arboricultural Thought Across Late Imperial China
Tuesday, May 13: (online)
    Yevgen Petrenko (Tübingen University) 
    “How to hit the Heart of a Flea”: Chinese Archery During the Ming and Qing Dynasties
Tuesday, May 20: (in: China Center Tübingen)
    Prof. David Luesink (Sacred Heart University) 
    Chinese Students in the Dissection Room: Locating Anatomical Knowledge
Tuesday, May 27: 
    Zhao Yawei M.A. (Tübingen University)
    The Fine Phrase and Landscape Paintings During the Eastern Tour of the Qianlong Reign
Tuesday, June 17: 
    Han Qijin  M.A.  (Tübingen University)
    Translating the European Thermometer to China during the Kangxi Reign (1662–1722)
Tuesday, July 1: 
    Zheng Xinyu M.A. (Tübingen University)
    The Yunqi 運氣 Theory in Medical Treatises in Late Imperial China
Tuesday, July 8: (via zoom)
    Prof. Tracy Miller (Vanderbilt University)
    Son of Heaven, Cakravartin, and Empire in 10th Century China: Song Taizong's Kaibao Monastery Pagoda and its Architectural Legacy
Tuesday, July 15: 
    Chen Chuyi (Tübingen University) 
    Soda Water: On the Way to Late Imperial China
Tuesday, July 22: 
    Derickie Gu (Tübingen University) 
    Lotus Plucking in Southern Qi and Liang Poetry

Date: 4 June (Wednesday) 
Time: 12 – 14h 
Venue: Keplerstr. 2, Room 036; Zoom meeting 987 1722 3673

Prof. Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik's main research areas are Chinese historiography of the 20th century, Chinese and East Asian history of the 19th and 20th centuries, contemporary Chinese discourse on the Great Chinese Famine and the Cultural Revolution, as well as contemporary Chinese policy, in particular on questions of the relationship between state and society as well as of central and periphery in the policy areas of public health, minority issues, urbanization and the environment. Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik publishes and comments on issues of Chinese foreign policy and domestic political development in the PRC.
In 2020, following her retirement, Professor Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik continued her teaching activities in the field of Chinese History at the Department for East Asian Studies and the Faculty for Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, as well as at the Diplomatische Akademie in Vienna. From 2022 to 2027, she serves as a member of the Council (Akademierat) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
 

Speaker: Chen Yuyao, PhD student of Peking University

Date: 26th May 2025

Time: 4-6pm c.t. 

Venue: Keplerstr. 2, Room 036 

Abstract: The essence of populism lies in constructing an antagonism between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite.’ In this respect, populism can be criticized as making use of rhetorical strategies rather than conveying an objective reality, with privileged groups often employing populist rhetoric to fabricate a disadvantaged identity for strategic political gains. The ‘anti-China’ populist rhetoric of the administration of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) exemplifies this phenomenon. There is evidence that Taiwan’s democratization and economic success have given rise to a Taiwanese sense of superiority over mainland China. There is also evidence that the DPP has leveraged the ‘China threat’ narrative to construct perceptions of insecurity and threat, thereby creating a sense of national victimhood that helps to gain political support in which mainland China is framed as a scapegoat for Taiwan’s eroding superiority. The cross-strait antagonism has been framed as a confrontation between ‘threatening Taiwan’ and ‘defending Taiwan,’ with references also to Taiwan as a ‘beacon of democracy’ and ‘defender of international order’ and mainland China as an ‘authoritarian threat’ and ‘disruptor of international order’. This presentation argues that the DPP administration has exaggerated and manipulated the ‘China threat’ narrative, reshaping it into a form of ‘populism of the privileged’. The presentation also goes further in that it highlights important differences with traditional forms of populism: Unlike such populism, which is typically driven by the lower social classes, Taiwan’s ‘anti-China’ populism illustrates that a sense of privilege and victimhood narrative can comfortably sit alongside each other. 

Tuesday, 6 May 2025, 4 PM c.t.
Venue: Wilhelmstr. 133, R. 30
Hybrid Online Zoom Meeting ID: 936 0056 4476 Passcode: 928919

Bio Bill Hayton is an Associate Fellow with the Asia-Pacific programme at Chatham House and the editor of the academic journal ‘Asian Affairs’. He is the author of four books on Asia, including The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia and The Invention of China. Bill worked for the BBC for 22 years until January 2021. He was the BBC’s reporter in Vietnam in 2006-7 and was seconded to the public broadcaster in Myanmar in 2013-14. In 2019, he received his PhD from the University of Cambridge for work on the history and development of the South China Sea disputes. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

28 April Monday     18 – 20h    (Taiwan Colloquium)
Taiwan, the One-China Policy, and the Theory of Deterrence

7 May Wednesday     12 – 14h    (Public Lecture)
Deterrence and the Status Quo in the Taiwan Strait

Prof. James Lee is an Assistant Research Fellow (Professor) at the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He is also a Senior Non-Resident Associate Fellow of the Research Division at the NATO Defense College and an affiliated researcher of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. His research interests are in U.S. foreign policy and the security of Taiwan. His work has been published in EurAmerica, Business and Politics, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Journal of East Asian Studies, and the Journal of Chinese Political Science.
 

Greater China Studies / Taiwan Colloquium – Summer Semester 2025          

28 April Monday  
18 – 20h  
Prof. James Lee (Taiwan Colloquium) 
Taiwan, the One-China Policy, and the Theory of Deterrence 

7 May Wednesday  
12 – 14h 
Prof. James Lee (Public Lecture) 
Deterrence and the Status Quo in the Taiwan Strait 

26 May Monday 
16 – 18h 
Chen Yuyao (Taiwan Colloquium) 
How the narrative of China as a threat evolved into a populist attitude in Taiwan during the administration of the Democratic Progressive Party (2016–2024)  

4 June Wednesday 
12 – 14h 
Prof. Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik (Public Lecture) 
The “strategic triangle” of China, Russia and the USA: Can the three actors agree on the reorganization of the world? 

18 June Wednesday 
12 – 14h 
Prof. Gordon Cheung (Public Lecture) 
Chinese Ethnics Food Enterprises in the UK: Socio-economic Changes vs. Entrepreneurial Resilience after the Pandemic 

23 June Monday  
16 – 18h 
Prof. Gordon Cheung (Taiwan Colloquium) 
From Cold War Island to Museum of Peace?: Kinmen in Cross-strait Relations 

14 July Monday  
16 – 18h (sharp!) 
Lin Chia-Yi (Taiwan Colloquium) 
Taiwan's Semiconductor Supply Chain Strategy under Global Economic Security  
Chen Wei-chen (Taiwan Colloquium) 
The Integration of Infrastructure and Islam: A Comparative Study of Taiwan and Thailand 

16 July Wednesday 
12 – 14h 
Lukas Eggert (Research Colloquium) 
The Chinese Video Game Market: Between State Control and Economic Ambition 
 

23 July Wednesday  
12 – 14h 
Julia Fernández García (Research Colloquium) 
Mainland Chinese Workers in Hong Kong: Labour Market Integration, Challenges, and Opportunities
 

The introductory event for Sinology/Chinese Studies for the summer semester 2025 will take place on
Monday, April 14, 2025, from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Seminar room at the China Center (Hintere Grabenstraße 26)

"Export Controls and the China-US Technology Dispute: Assessing the Impacts on Taiwan’s Trade"

Date: February 6
Time: 16:00 c.t.
Location: Keplerstr. 2, Room 0.81 & Online (Zoom: 987 1722 3673)

This talk will explore the effects of export controls on Taiwan’s trade and broader economic implications.

Wang Fujun obtained his PhD at the Graduate Institute for Taiwan Studies of Xiamen University in China, focusing on cross-strait trade relations. In 2019, he obtained a bachelor's degree from Hefei University of Technology. Following this, he was funded by the China Scholarship Council to study at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Russia. From March to December 2021, he studied at Kyung Hee University in South Korea. In June 2022, he obtained dual master's degrees in Regional Studies and International Relations. Wang Fujun is proficient in English, Russian, and Chinese, as well as possessing a certain level of proficiency in German and Korean.

Research Colloquium: From ‘Social Problems’ to ‘Social Assets’: Geopolitics, Discursive Shifts in Children of Southeast Asian Marriage Migrants, and Mother-Child Dyadic Citizenship in Taiwan

Wednesday, Feb 5, 12 – 14 c.t. 

Public Lecture: The Tug of War over Multiculturalism: a reflection on the politics of ethnicities and the dialectic process of empowering marriage migrants in Taiwan

Join us at Keplerstr. 2, Room 1.81, or on Zoom 987 1722 3673

Hsiao-Chuan HSIA, Professor at the Graduate Institute of Social Work, National Chengchi University, Taiwan, the first scholar studying marriage migration issues in Taiwan. Her publications analyze issues of immigrants, migrant workers, citizenship, empowerment and social movement.

Hsia is a praxis-oriented researcher striving for the empowerment of immigrant women and the making of im/migrant movements. She initiated the Chinese programs for marriage migrants in 1995, leading to the establishment of TransAsia Sisters Association of Taiwan, spearheading the movement for marriage migrants’ rights and welfare in Taiwan. She has served as an officer of various regional and international organizations, including Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants, Alliance of Marriage Migrants Organizations for Rights and Empowerment and International Migrants Alliance.
 

Taiwan Colloquium with Wang Anne-Chie and Yan Zhi-Jun

zoom.us/j/98717223673
Zoom Meeting ID: 987 1722 3673

We invite scholars, students, and professionals to join us for this engaging event celebrating the publication of Handbook of Chinese Migration to Europe.

The event will include:

Introduction

Presentation of Volume Sessions and insights from the volume

Q&A Session to engage with the authors

Future research directions and the next Handbook in series

Closing Remarks and thank You

Moderator: Prof. Karin Polit
Panelists: Mette Thunø, Simeng Wang, Emilie Tran Sautedé, and Yu-chin Tseng 
 

Date: Wednesday 22 Jan, 2025

Time:  10-12 s.t.(CET)

Location: Online (please see RSVP) and on-site (China Centrum Tübingen, Hintere Grabenstraße 26, 72070 Tübingen)

RSVP here: Registration form

If you are unable to access the Google registration form or have additional inquiries, please contact Yu-chin Tseng, yu-chin.tseng@uni-tuebingen.de

We look forward to your participation in celebrating the launch of Handbook of Chinese Migration to Europe!

She provided an abstract for the lecture: 

The post-war liberal world order, and its neoliberal transformations since the 1990s, supported a citizenship model that envisions agentic, right-bearing and globally oriented cosmopolitan individuals. This model unfolded and became standardized through several interacting dynamics including national and transnational courts (e.g. the European Court of Justice), instruments of international organizations (e.g. the International Conventions on Human Rights, the UN’s Human Development Index), and the expansion of education worldwide and a network of expertise around it. Drawing on a joint project (with Hector Cebolla Boado) and using a multi-sided, representative survey of internationally mobile and non-mobile Chinese higher education students (with control groups of European students), we analyze the reach and limits of this citizenship model. In the broader migration literature, international mobility and globalization are linked in two specific ways: (i) the experience of mobility is highly transformative and engenders individuals with broad agentic qualities (defined as transnational human capital) and open, tolerant, solidaristic affinities beyond “own kind” (defined as cosmopolitanism); (ii) those who are internationally mobile are a positively selected group on human and cultural capital and thus are already more agentic and inclined to cosmopolitanism than those who are sedentary. Our findings question both these propositions and support an alternative explanation that emphasizes the increasingly standardized and transnational nature of higher education, on the one hand, and the timing and context of China’s entry into the global world, on the other.

Her bio: 

Yasemin Soysal is Research Professor of Global Sociology at WZB, University Professor at the Free University of Berlin, and the Deputy Co-director and a leading Principal Investigator of the SCRIPTS Cluster of Excellence. Her research brings global and sociological–institutional perspectives into the study of the historical development and current reconfigurations of nation-state and citizenship, with a specific interest in the diffusion, enactment, contradictions, and contestations of global cultural frameworks.

Knowledge is Power? A Political Sociology of China’s Scientific Rise

“When studying China, we tend to overlook the context in which we ourselves are most active, that is, academia, or more specifically, research and education. This gap is all the more surprising given that the People’s Republic of China has become one of the most important players in global science and scholarship today, and given the role that knowledge and technology play in Chinese society and politics, and increasingly in China’s foreign policy. This talk aims to dust off this topic and show that it is an exciting starting point for exciting combinations of social science analyses and China studies expertise. I will argue for a perspective that understands scientific knowledge production as a constantly evolving world institution in which actors from China naturally have stakes, agency, and increasingly the power to initiate larger processes of change. After highlighting relevant concepts as well as research approaches and sites at the macro and micro level, drawing on ongoing studies in my research group, I will conclude by briefly discussing practical strategies for China scholars in this field under increasingly challenging conditions.”

Anna L. Ahlers is the founder and head of the Lise Meitner Research Group at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, which explores the many facets of China’s rapid and extensive ascent in the global system of science. 
 

Join us on 19 Dec at 16h c.t. at Keplerstr. 2, Room 003, or online via Zoom Meeting ID: 987 1722 3673

Colloquium History and Culture of China, 10 Dec 2024, at 4:15 PM.

Zoom Link zoom.us/j/99615912636
Meeting-ID: 996 1591 2636
Kenncode: 675443

Public lecture: Wednesday, 4 Dec, 12-14h

The Myth of War in the Taiwan Strait: The Yizhou Dilemma and Elite Perceptions

Research colloquium: Monday, 9 Dec, 16-18h

Strategic Reassurances and Deteriorating Ambiguity: Stabilizing the Taiwan Strait Détente

Both events will be held at Keplerstr. 2, Room 1.81. You may also join us on zoom: zoom.us/j/98717223673
Meeting ID: 987 1722 3673

Colloquium History and Culture of China
26.11.2024 at 4:15 PM in room 62 of the Department of Chinese and Korean Studies in Tübingen, Wilhelmstraße 133.

You may also attend online via Zoom:
Zoom Link zoom.us/j/99615912636
Meeting-ID: 996 1591 2636
Kenncode: 675443

22. November 2024, 14-16 Uhr c.t.
China Centrum Tübingen
Seminarraum Hintere Grabenstr. 26, 72070 Tübingen

The Colloquium will be held on 19.11.2024 at 4:15 pm in room 62 of the Department of Chinese and Korean Studies in Tübingen, Wilhelmstraße 133.

You may also attend online via Zoom:
Zoom Link zoom.us/j/99615912636
Meeting-ID: 996 1591 2636
Kenncode: 675443

The event will be held at Keplerstr. 2, Room 003, at 10am this Friday (15th Nov). All are welcome.

Abstract Seeking solutions out of the late Qing crisis had been deeply intertwined with China’s modernization process, for which imitating Western-style scientific and technological systems occupied a central position in debates and reforms. This study examines the hitherto ignored concept of technology in the late nineteenth century. Unlike popular narratives that tend to downplay the technical or engineering educational reform (especially before 1895), this study argues that the jiqiju [bureau for manufacturing machinery] and the previously overlooked yiju [bureau for arts] were two
pioneering institutional models founded by the late Qing reformers for developing manufacturing and educational enterprises in the 1860s; and that they stimulated the Confucian scholarly learning of arts and triggered a conceptual shift in institutionalizing the learning of arts, thereby changing the educational system. That last step permitted the establishment of schools for mass education, open for scholars and other social groups.

Bio Dr. Chen Hailian is an engineer-turned-sinologist trained at the Universities of Tsinghua and Tübingen. She was recently a principal investigator of an BMBF-project conducted at the University of Leipzig (2019–2023). That research project examines the history of technical education in China. Dr. Chen was also a worldmaking fellow (2023) at the University of Heidelberg and held a replacement professorship (Lehrstuhlvertretung in WS 2023-24) at Ruhr-University Bochum. Currently she has received a grant from the Jeanne-Baret-fund (2024-25) to join the TRANSMARE Institute, University of Trier. Dr. Chen’s research has explored the history of mining practices, governance of resources (zinc, coal, and human resources), and engineering/technical education in early modern and modern China. She is the author of Zinc for Coin and Brass: Bureaucrats, Merchants, Artisans, and Mining Laborers in Qing China, ca. 1680s–1830s (Leiden: Brill, 2019), and one of the guest-editors of a special issue “Mobilizing global knowledge: Institutionalising expertise in East Asia’s industrial transition” in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (2024).

Tuesday, 12 November 2024, 16:00
Hybrid session in Wilhelmstraße 133, Raum 62, or via
https://zoom.us/j/99615912636?pwd=4IBpLvhaShIkHDKzxzEPnvKGz7Rjrm.1
Zoom ID: 996 1591 2636, Passcode: 675443

We will meet on 05.11.2024 at 4:15 pm in room 62 of the Department of Chinese Studies in Tübingen, Wilhelmstraße 133. 

You may also attend online via Zoom:
Zoom Link zoom.us/j/99615912636
Meeting-ID: 996 1591 2636
Kenncode: 675443

This lecture will explore Hong Kong’s shift from a system that upheld certain liberal freedoms and competitive elections to one under a more centralized governance model. Dr. Ortmann will delve into the underlying political shifts following the 2020 National Security Law, discussing changes in civil liberties, the electoral landscape, and the overall governance structure. The talk will offer insights into how these transformations reflect broader regional and global trends in governance, with a particular focus on the balance between security measures and civic freedoms in modern political systems.

This event promises to provide students and attendees a nuanced understanding of the recent developments in Hong Kong’s political framework.

The talk will be held on Monday, 28 October, at 16-18h c.t., in Room 1.81, Keplerstr. 2. It is also available on zoom:

zoom.us/j/98717223673
Meeting ID: 987 1722 3673

Taiwan is experiencing cultural shifts as modern influences reshape traditional norms. While elements of traditional Chinese culture—such as language, literature, religion, and family values—have long been central to Taiwanese society, recent efforts to reduce their emphasis in education have led to growing polarization. This research examines the importance of traditional Chinese culture for Taiwan by analyzing two perspectives: the 'Great Tradition' (elite culture) and the 'Little Tradition' (popular culture), covering Taiwan's historical, cultural, and social development. It invites reflection on whether Taiwan should embrace or distance itself from its Chinese heritage and considers how this decision might shape its future.

Bio Wu Wanghai 吴旺海 is a PhD candidate at Yuelu Academy 岳麓书院, Hunan University, and currently a visiting PhD student at the CSMC of Hamburg University. His research interests focus on the history of Chinese thought (particularly Neo-Confucianism and intellectual trends from the Qing dynasty to the Republican era), as well as the collation and interpretation of classical texts(primarily within the Confucian classics). His dissertation delves into the evolution of thought and scholarship during the Qing Dynasty, using cases studies to uncover the processes behind the formation of intellectual history in this period.

Tuesday, 29 Oct 2024, 16:00, in Room 62 (2nd floor), Wilhelmstr. 133
Zoom Link zoom.us/j/99615912636
Meeting-ID: 996 1591 2636
Kenncode: 675443

Amongst all historical capital cities of China, Kaifeng occupies a special place. “Raise the eyes and there were green bowers and painted chambers, embroidered gates and pearly shades. Decorated chariots vied to park in the Heavenly Avenue and bejeweled horses competed to spur through the
Imperial Street. ” (Stephen West trsl.) Song dynasty Kaifeng was a full expression of China’s reach into global trade networks while at the same time being a hub of local cultural expression. Eventually, Kaifeng failed and fell. This is the story of the ancient capital city’s afterlife.

Tuesday, 22 October 2024, 16:00-18:00 c.t.
Wilhelmstraße 133, Room 62 (2nd floor)
Online Zoom meeting ID: 996 1591 2636 Passcode: 675443
 

zoom.us/j/98717223673
Meeting ID: 987 1722 3673

[updated 12/12/2024: Thursday sessions are to be held at Room 003, Keplerstr. 2]

The talk will be held on Wednesday, 23 October, at 12noon-2pm c.t., in Room 1.81, Keplerstr. 2. It is also available on zoom:

zoom.us/j/98717223673
Meeting ID: 987 1722 3673

This research project, led by Dr. Yefremov, explores China's strategic approach to the Russian-Ukrainian war, focusing on Beijing's official stance of neutrality and the broader implications of the conflict for China's foreign policy. The study traces a detailed timeline of China's actions and statements throughout the war, offering insights into the pragmatic calculus behind China's behavior. Dr. Yefremov analyzes how China perceives the Russian-Ukrainian war as a "vertical-type" conflict, a model that frames the dynamics and potential resolution of the conflict in hierarchical terms. By using this framework, the research delves into China's potential role in peace negotiations and its contributions to shaping the international order.

wir freuen uns, dass Sie sich für ein Sinologiestudium in Tübingen entschieden haben – herzlich willkommen!

Nach über drei Jahrzehnten ist China ein unangenehmer Konkurrent und problematischer Partner geworden. Tag für Tag schlägt sich das in den deutschen Medien nieder. Sollen wir weiterhin auf eine umfängliche Kooperation setzen oder auf „De-risiking“? Oder gar „De-coupling“? Was ist die richtige China-Strategie?

Auf diese Fragen haben auch wir keine Zauberformel parat. Aber Sie können während Ihres Studiums bei uns lernen, wie man sich kundig macht, um sich zu dieser und ähnlichen Fragen eine eigene Meinung zu bilden, eine Meinung, die auch immer die chinesische Perspektive mit einbezieht. Und Sie bekommen das Rüstzeug, um Ihre Meinung in den entsprechenden Diskursen einzubringen.

Die größte Herausforderung für Sie dürfte darin liegen, den eigenen kulturellen Horizont zu überschreiten und sich China, der chinesischen Welt in ihrer grandiosen Vielfalt, zu öffnen. Wir sind überzeugt, dass Tübingen ein ausgezeichneter Ort ist, wo das gelingen kann. Denn dafür haben wir tatsächlich eine Zauberformel, die da lautet:

Sprache – Welt – Erfahrung.

Für Ihren Studienbeginn wünschen wir Ihnen viel Freude, Mut und Zuversicht. Möge sich Ihre Studiumsentscheidung als die genau Richtige für Sie erweisen!

Um Sie kennenzulernen, möchten wir Sie gern zu einem zweitägigen geselligen Get-Together einladen (China Centrum Tübingen, Hintere Grabenstr. 26).

Im Namen aller Lehrkräfte und MitarbeiterInnen

mit herzlichen Grüßen

Ihr

Prof. Dr. Achim Mittag
Seniorprofessor

Im zu Ende gehenden Semester ballen sich die Termine – vielleicht finden Sie aber trotzdem Zeit, diesem Vortrag, der sehr interessante Einblicke in die vielfältigen Eindrücke chinesischer Reisender in die schöne neue Welt verspricht, beizuwohnen! Er findet nicht in der Wilhelmstr., sondern im China Centrum Tübingen (CCT) in der Hinteren Grabenstr. 26, 72070 Tübingen, statt.

Taiwan after the January 2024 National Elections - Challenges Ahead

This presentation discusses some of the key domestic and external challenges facing the new DPP minority government under President Lai Ching-te, who took office in May 2024. Emphasis will be placed on Taiwan's position in the ongoing restructuring of global supply chains in high-tech industries and Taiwan's geopolitical environment, which is increasingly shaped by the strategic competition between China and the United States.

The venue is Room 301 at Lothar-Meyer-Bau. All are welcome.

The event is available online as well. Please join us via Zoom at 
https://zoom.us/j/95547771512?pwd=Llp3fdVcRlbtmVt5KeGa9bmO0OCoIh.1

Meeting ID: 955 4777 1512
Passcode: 061465

What’s AI got to do with it? The Odyssey of Knowledge Production and Stress through the Ages and into the Future
A Lecture by Layla AbdelRahim

Abstract. Academia in crisis has been the subject of conferences and publications for several decades now. The novel factor that has recently appeared in this conversation is the unabashed infiltration of AI into the heart of knowledge production in the “Ivory Tower”. However, is the “crisis” really all that new or even surprising? And, if not, what is this phenomenon and what can or should we do about it? Most importantly, what are the implications of the advent of the long awaited technological development for “knowledge”, work, and life? By nuancing our understanding of stress and challenging our precepts about what is knowledge and the nature of technology, I take this conversation beyond the immediate concerns of survival in academia. What if, I ask, what we assume to be the production of knowledge actually leads to ignorance and to the destruction of our world? And, what’s AI got to do with it all?

Bio. Layla AbdelRahim is a comparativist anthropologist. She is the author of two books, numerous essays, and fiction. Her main field is epistemology with a focus on civilization and the roots of violence between human animals and against other animals and the environment. Her work contributes to a range of disciplines, such as anthropology, epistemology, animal studies, literary and cultural studies, anarchism, philosophy, sociology, geography, environmental studies, and education.

You can follow her work at: Get more from Layla AbdelRahim on Patreon

Tuesday, Jul 16, 18:00 (Germany) Online
EST time 12:00 noon, New Delhi time 9:30 PM

or by Zoom (https://zoom.us/j/94593487878?pwd=eDdnQTV3aHMwTkxBazZ0N3l2R0MzUT09)
Meeting ID: 945 9348 7878
Passcode: 202511

"The fine phrase and landscape paintings during the Eastern tour of the Qianlong reign" by Zhao Yawei M.A. (Tübingen University).
The Colloquium will be held on 09.07.2024 at 4:15 pm in room 30 of the Department of Chinese and Korean Studies in Tübingen, Wilhelmstraße 133.
You may also attend online via Zoom:
Meeting Link: https://zoom.us/j/94759700186?pwd=eE1rYWJRcFB0SlZ0aGFEN2NHbkoxdz09
Meeting ID: 947 5970 0186
Passcode: 501205

This is an open-access publication and can be downloaded under the following address: https://publikationen.uni-tuebingen.de/xmlui/handle/10900/151266 

Or via Zoom:
Meeting Link: zoom.us/j/91839708959
Meeting ID: 918 3970 8959
Passcode: 089926

BIG is the heart-wrenching story of six families, whose children are battling cancer, coming together in a hospital ward.

The event will start at 7 p.m.. Tickets are available at https://tuebinger-kinos.de/programmuebersicht/movie/big or at the box office. 
For more information on the film see: 
https://uni-tuebingen.de/forschung/zentren-und-institute/european-research-center-on-contemporary-taiwan/activities/singular-events/

Unless specified otherwise, the venue is room 1.81 at Keplerstraße 2. 

Taiwan's skilled immigration policy is designed to address the country's declining population by attracting skilled migrants. This talk focuses on Taiwan's skilled immigration policy and their effects on migrant workers, based on in-depth interviews conducted with foreign individuals who obtained higher education degrees in Taiwan and chose to work and reside in the country. While policymakers have relaxed the qualifications for foreign graduates to obtain work permit, the high income threshold for permanent residency applications has led to most individuals remaining in Taiwan as temporary migrants for a long time. As temporary migrants, these individuals must make various compromises and accept less favorable working conditions and income. Their vulnerable employment status in turn has made it even more challenging for them to transition from temporary to permanent residency. Consequently, their temporary migrant status and their precarious job conditions mutually reinforce each other, perpetuating a cycle of vulnerability. Moreover, as temporary migrants, they are denied access to full social rights such as joining pension system and receiving unemployment aid. 

The increasing number of long-term temporary skilled migrants in Taiwan highlights the commodification of citizenship, where migrants' rights are linked to their market values. I contend that such policy outcomes are not only ethically questionable for migrants but also unsustainable for Taiwan's future. This situation is morally concerning because, as skilled migrants hold on in the hope of meeting the settlement requirements, they bear significant risks, including financial and psychological burdens. The policymakers appear to devalue the migrants' time, as if their time holds no significance. Furthermore, beyond the moral dimension, this situation is also an unsustainable one. Despite claims by Taiwanese policymakers that new immigration policies aim to transform Taiwan into a more immigrant-friendly society, my research underscores a different reality. In a time when Taiwan requires a new population rather than a transient workforce, the government continues to formulate policies that result in the influx and outflow of foreign migrants, with limited prospects for permanent settlement. In my view, the most pressing migration debate in Taiwan, both presently and in the foreseeable future, revolves around how to enhance settlement opportunities for foreign migrants.

The Colloquium will be held on 18.06.2024 at 4:15 pm in room 30 of the Department of Chinese and Korean Studies in Tübingen, Wilhelmstraße 133.

You may also attend online via Zoom:
Meeting Link: https://zoom.us/j/94759700186?pwd=eE1rYWJRcFB0SlZ0aGFEN2NHbkoxdz09
Meeting ID: 947 5970 0186
Passcode: 501205

Tuesday, 11th June 2014, 12:00 CET
Nauklerstr. 35, R. 106,
or by Zoom
(https://zoom.us/j/94593487878?pwd=eDdnQTV3aHMwTkxBazZ0N3l2R0MzUT09)

The Colloquium will be held on 11.06.2024 at 4:15 pm in room 30 of the Department of Chinese and Korean Studies in Tübingen, Wilhelmstraße 133.

You may also attend online via Zoom:
Meeting Link: https://zoom.us/j/94759700186?pwd=eE1rYWJRcFB0SlZ0aGFEN2NHbkoxdz09
Meeting ID: 947 5970 0186
Passcode: 501205

On Wednesday, 12 June, Prof. Huang will then give a public lecture titled 'A sociological analysis of gamete donation regulations and experiences in Taiwan' at 12.15 p.m. at the same venue. The talk will analyse how assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) are co-shaped with regulations, societal values, and human dignity that make diverse practices in different societies. Taiwan has one of the most rigorous regulations of third-party donation in the world, yet we know little about the donors’ knowledge and attitudes toward their donation laws, clinical practices, and the rights of donor-conceived children. And so, the ethical challenges of egg-donations are also to be discussed. 

Tuesday, 4th June 2014, 12:00 CET
Nauklerstr. 35, R. 106, or by Zoom
(https://zoom.us/j/94593487878?pwd=eDdnQTV3aHMwTkxBazZ0N3l2R0MzUT09)

Dr. Alexandre Gandil from D2iA at Bordeaux Montaigne University, also affiliated to the Centre de recherches internationales at Sciences Po, Paris, will talk about 'Taiwan beyond its own Strait: Assessing Taipei’s sovereignty claims over the South China Sea from below' at 4 p.m., followed by Dr. Liang Chia-Yu (梁家瑜) from the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, who is going to present 'Status Sacer: A Proposal for a Taiwanese International Relations Theory', at 5 p.m.

The colloquium will take place from 4pm to 6pm c.t. at Room 1.81, Keplerstr. 2. All are welcome. 
 

The rise of China as an economic powerhouse presents both challenges and opportunities in different parts of the world. In Africa, China’s rise was initially thought to present Africa with an opportunity to rethink and chart out its development path. Decades later, results suggest that while this assumption was legitimate, a lot more needs to be done on the side of Africa to utilize the space offered by China’s growing global stature.
Dr. Muhidin J. Shangwe is a Lecturer of International Relations in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of Dar es Salaam. He holds a BA in Political Science and Public Administration, an MA in International Relations from the University of Dar es Salaam, and a PhD in International Relations from the East China Normal University, People’s Republic of China.  His main research area is Africa-China relations, focusing on aspects of soft power. Other research interests include African international relations, regional integration, civil society, democracy and elections.

public lecture/ free entrance

See also https://uni-tuebingen.de/de/127242 

As usual, the Colloquium will be held on Thursday 6.06.2024 at 4:00 PM at the Intitute of Sociology, Hegelbau, Großer Übungsraum 101.

You may also attend online via Zoom:
Meeting Link: https://zoom.us/j/94759700186?pwd=eE1rYWJRcFB0SlZ0aGFEN2NHbkoxdz09
Meeting ID: 947 5970 0186, Passcode: 501205

The underlying paper is an update of his chapter “China and Germany After the 2021 Election: Between Continuity and Increasing Confrontation” in Simona A. Grano, David Wei and Feng Huang's (eds.) China-US Competition: Impact on Small and Middle Powers' Strategic Choices, Palgrave 2023. In his chapter, he analysed the political changes faced by Germany, the European Union’s most important player, and the fragmented and contrasting positions in the German political as well as academic environment, when it comes to China or the United States.

All the while Germany’s economic dependence on China is evaluated as one of the key factors influencing the internal debate, given that China has been Germany’s most important commercial partner since 2015, making the country’s strategic options between the two hegemons quite difficult. He also included a part asking to what degree German-Taiwan relations are impacted by the changes in China-German relations.

Biography

Dr. phil. Jens Damm, Associate Fellow at ERCCT Tübingen, is Lecturer at the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Institute of Chinese Studies. From February 2025 he will be the visiting chair of Taiwan Studies at the University of Leiden. He was an Associate Professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Studies, Chang Jung University, Tainan, Taiwan (2009-2019) and an Assistant Professor at Freie Universität Berlin until 2009. His research interests include the new media and the Internet, the Taiwanese and Chinese diasporas, and gender studies. He was also PI of “China's Cultural Diplomacy and the Role of Non-state Actors”, 2015-2017 (GARC) at the Oriental Institute Prague. His most recent publications include:

(2024) Politics and the Media, in: Gunter Schubert (Hrsg.) Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan, Routledge (accepted)
(2024) Contested and Negotiated Discourses: Media Framing of Homosexuality Issues in Taiwan, in: Ming-yeh Rawnsley and Yiben Ma (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media. Routledge (accepted). 
(2023) With Simona Grano. „Ein Land, zwei Systeme“: Hongkong und Taiwan. In Nele Noesselt (ed.) China: Geographien einer Weltmacht. Springer. 
(2023) With Julia Marinaccio. Taiwan’s Enduring Controversy on Absentee Voting. Journal of Democracy (under review). 

"The Dujiangyan: Revisiting Chinese History in Maintenance and Repair" by Dr. Chun XU (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin)

The Colloquium will be held on 14.05.2024 at 4:15 pm in room 30 of the Department of Chinese and Korean Studies in Tübingen, Wilhelmstraße 133.
You may also attend online via Zoom:
Meeting Link: https://zoom.us/j/94759700186?pwd=eE1rYWJRcFB0SlZ0aGFEN2NHbkoxdz09
Meeting ID: 947 5970 0186
Passcode: 501205

Abstract This talk re-examines the remarkable persistence, across two long millennia, of the Dujiangyan irrigation system, viewing it through the revealing lens of maintenance. This history of technology is based on three reflections: (1) the crucial yet often overlooked role played by successive cohorts of engineers and artisans in ensuring the continuity of the gabion technology; (2) a revisit of the practical function of corvée labor in system upkeep; (3) a technical analysis of the late imperial state's recurrent yet ultimately frustrated ambitions to replace the existing gabion works with masonry structures. By proceeding through this series of reflections, the talk serves to disclose how imperial governance was sustained, and indeed constituted, by provisional and contested interdependencies.
Bio Dr. Xu, Chun 徐淳 is a historian of late imperial China. He received his PhD in 2018 from Heidelberg University. Focusing on agriculture and water control, Chun studies the interplay between technology and political processes in Song, Yuan, and Ming times. His current book project, “Dragons and Commissioners,” is a study of the Ming Empire on the ground in its remotest province of Yunnan in which he explores how the study of technology in a predominantly agrarian society could reformulate perspectives on Ming China as a premodern empire. He is also working on a project that examines the epistemological and technological underpinnings of the eleventh-century reform in Song China.

Wednesdays

May 29    12 – 14    Jens Damm (Public Lecture) 
China and Germany Relation since 2021: Between Continuity and Increasing Confrontation  

June 12    12 – 14    Huang Yu-Ling (Public Lecture) 
A sociological analysis of gamete donation regulations and experiences in Taiwan    

June 19    12 – 14    Tseng Yen-Fen (Public Lecture) 
Increase in immigration without settlement: How Taiwan skills-based immigration policy institutionalizes temporariness of skilled migrants 

June 26    12 – 14    Vivien Markert (Research Colloquium)
The Chinese Muslim Diaspora in Cairo: Research Notes

July 17    12 – 14    Gunter Schubert (Public Lecture at Wilhelmstr. 56 (Lothar-Meyer-Bau) SR 301) Big Challenges Ahead - Taiwan after the 2024 National Elections

It will begin at 4.15 p.m. at Keplerstraße 2, room no. 1.81. Click the picture for more information on the topic. 

Stress and Daily Life of the Middle Classes in China, Germany, India and Japan

held by Divyaraj Amiya, M.Phil., Dr. Felix Spremberg, and Dr. Ulrich Theobald.

John Zerzan, questioning our traditional understanding of time, work, stress, daily life and their possible futures, belongs to the school of philosophers who actively argue against the mainstream common sense in the Western or the Eastern world. He is sceptical of both streams, be it technophilic Ray Kurzweil of the Singularity fame (belief in the imminent merger of biological with non-biological intelligence) or of Noam Chomsky for not being sufficiently critical.

Tuesday, May 14, 18:00 (Germany) Online
Oregon time 9:00 AM, New Delhi time 9:30 PM
or by Zoom (https://zoom.us/j/94593487878?pwd=eDdnQTV3aHMwTkxBazZ0N3l2R0MzUT09)
Meeting ID: 945 9348 7878
Passcode: 202511

Tue, 7 May  2024, 16:00 c.t.
Hybrid Veranstaltung: Präsenz in Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 30 Online Zoom Meeting ID: 947 5970 0186, Passcode: 501205

30 Apr, Divyaraj Amiya: "Emergence and Development of  the Modern Urban Indian Middle Class: An Introduction"

7 May, Divyaraj Amiya and Jennifer Clemens: "`Time Nahin Hai`/Delhi After 20 Years 2.0 (2013): A Documentary Film on Imposed Time Poverty and Time Prosperity and Stress Report on India"

14 May at 6 pm (!), John Zerzan: “Origin(s) of Stress, Time and Domestication in World History: An Overview”

28 May, Divyaraj Amiya: "Anti-Work and Anti-Career Stories from Indian Literature"

4 Jun, Lukas Eggert: “Chinese Gaming Culture: The Fine Line between ‘Spiritual Opium Opium’ and Stressing about the Chinese Dream”

11 Jun, Ulrich Theobald: "Max Weber's Confucian Work Ethic, the 'Moderately Prosperous Society', and a Generation 'Lying Flat""

18 Jun, Felix Spremberg: “‘Lost in Exhaustion’: Stress and Daily Lives in Japan”

25 Jun, Elke Grosser (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Zeitpolitik, Berlin): "Time Stress in Different Areas of Life in Germany" (in German)

2 Jul, Elke Grosser: "Crises and Stress and a Time-Political Discussion of Stress" (in German)

9 Jul, International Workshop "Stress Among Young Students of +2 and Equivalent Exams to Prestigious Institutions in China, Germany, India, Japan and Other Countries"

16 Jul, Conclusion and Outlook

ALMA Tuesdays 12:00 at Nauklerstr. 35, R. 106
or via https://zoom.us/j/94593487878?pwd=eDdnQTV3aHMwTkxBazZ0N3l2R0MzUT09

Bio Alexander Jost studied Islamic and Chinese studies in Tübingen and Istanbul. After completing his Dissertation on Hydrometallurgy in Song China in 2014 he worked as Managing Director of the European Centre for Chinese Studies (ECCS) at Peking University. Since 2019 he has been working as a Senior Scientist for Global History at Salzburg University. His research interests include the human understanding and exploitation of his natural environment especially in the context of interregional exchanges and comparisons within Eurasia. In his doctoral dissertation he discussed the understanding and application of hydrometallurgy in Song China and his most recent project is concerned with historical images and perceptions of the polar regions.

Plants have been continuously cultivated for their medical and intoxicating effects since the birth of civilization. The use of intoxicants is a multifaceted phenomenon that has touched every culture in the world. One of the earliest global impacts of the illegal drug trade was the First Opium War in China (1839–1842). Illicit drug use first entered the DNA of American society through jazz music, the avant-garde and the underground. This deviant subculture spread until it reached America’s most educated and affluent generation, who became swept up in the most dramatic statistical explosion of drug use. Boomers then transmitted and popularized the drug experience through various channels (music, literature, film, art, fashion and advertising) that influenced the global youth culture. However, at the same time, the U.S. government has imposed a drug war on its citizens and the world.

The U.S.  government has been committed to combating the drug trade since President Wilson signed the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. U.S. delegates had earlier contributed to the International Opium Commission in Shanghai, 1909. America’s modern war on drugs was launched before the government had banned intoxicating liquors. And, just as Prohibition was ending, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was founded and sent its first commissioner Harry Anslinger to sign the Geneva Limitation Convention in 1931, which became the U.N.’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in 1946. In China, the drug policy of the ruling Kuomintang Party and the Japanese occupants was quite ambivalent and oscillated between suppression and fiscal abuse.

Yet, by the end of the century, America had played a key role in establishing the U.N. drug control regime, whose legal norms are backed by a global system of militarized police enforcement. Yet, while there is a growing awareness that America's brutal “war on drugs” has been a massive failure, the UN drug regime’s colonial and racist roots are also being internationally criticized. 

This interdisciplinary course will focus on U.S. drug policy from the perspective of international economic history, with particular reference to America’s bulging prison population of poor people of color who are disproportionately incarcerated. Drug possession doesn’t only lead to prison, it also leads to loss of civil and voting rights. We shall examine how America’s drug war creates racialized surveillance as well as racial discrimination and segregation, i.e., the so-called “New Jim Crow” caste-like legal system. Topics like organized crime, psychopharmacology, addiction, as well as medicalization vs criminalization drug policies will also be discussed.

Tuesday, May 7:
Patrick Aberle M.A. (Tübingen University)
Oil-Tree Cultivation in Late Imperial China

Thursday, May 14:
Dr. XU Chun (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
The Dujiangyan: Revisiting Chinese History in Maintenance and Repair

Tuesday, May 28:
Dr. Ulrich Theobald (Tübingen University)
The Appointment Method of 'Careful Selection' (lin xuan 遴選): With some Thoughts on the Translation of Technical Terms

Thursday, June 6:
Prof. ZHAO Dingxing and SUN Yanfei (Zhejiang University)
Migration and Popular Religion in Modern China: A Historical Sociological Analysis

Tuesday, June 11:
Prof. LIN Yi-Tang (Zurich University)
International Development Cropscape(s): Unearthing Memories and Debris of Taiwanese and Chinese Rice Technologies in Sierra Leone

Tuesday, June 18:
Dr. Matthias Schumann (Heidelberg University)
title tba

Tuesday, June 25:
ZHENG Xinyu M.A. (Tübingen University)
From Prime to Classics: Studying Yunqi with Patterns (li 理)

Tuesday, July 2:
JIANG Qingjun M.A. (Tübingen University)
Reshaping Masculinity during the Ming-Qing Transition Period (17th and 18th Centuries)

Tuesday, July 9:
ZHAO Yawei M.A. (Tübingen University)
The fine phrase and landscape paintings during the Eastern tour of the Qianlong reign

Tuesday, July 16:
Yevgen Petrenko (Tübingen University)
How to Hit the Heart of a Flea: Chinese Archery during the Ming and Qing Dynasties

Tuesday, July 23:
Prof. LI Ren-Yuan (Academia Sinica)
title tba

Languages will be German, English, and Chinese

10:15 “Welcome Back” and Introduction of the New Format
10:20 Introduction of the Staff
10:30 Lecture “What Renders Sinology Relevant Currently?” (Prof. Schubert) 
10:40 Student Representatives: Tales of the Semester Abroad, Announcements by the Fachschaft
10:50 General Announcements (SQ, TDCP)
11:00 Short Course Overview (QR-Code, Posters)
“Gallery of Courses”
11:40 Feedback and Farewell

Taiwan's parenting law has witnessed a remarkable shift towards safeguarding children's rights, marked by legislative changes and constitutionalization through judicial review. The challenges ahead involve aligning parenting laws with international standards, addressing jurisdictional conflicts, and reevaluating the intersection of civil and constitutional law in parenting legal frameworks. The evolution of Taiwan's parenting law serves as a valuable case study for jurisdictions globally seeking to enhance children's rights within legal frameworks.
The event will be held at Room 1.81, Keplerstr. 2, starting at 6pm c.t. All are welcome. 
 

Wednesday, February 7, 2024, at 14:15
Venue: China Centrum Tübingen, Hintere Grabenstr. 26
or via Zoom: Meeting ID: 944 2415 3682; Code: 908228

"Cross-cultural Dynamics and Applications of Taiwan Travel Literature"

Thursday, 25 Jan 2024, at 6 P.M. in Keplerstraße 2, R. 1.81.

Dienstag, 23. Januar 2023, 16 Uhr c.t.
Hybrid Veranstaltung: Präsenz in Wilhelmstr. 133, Raum 30 Online Zoom Meeting ID: 947 5970 0186, Passcode: 501205

Lektorin/Lektor
(50 %, m/w/d, bis zu E13 TV-L)

unbefristet zu besetzen.
Die regelmäßige Arbeitszeit beträgt 19,75 Stunden wöchentlich.

Zu den Aufgaben gehören:

• Chinesischunterricht für die B.A.- und M.A.-Studiengänge der Sinologie im Umfang von 12 SWS
• Mitarbeit im Team der Sprachlehrkräfte und in der Abteilung sowie bei der Kooperation mit den Partner-Universitäten
• Beratung und Betreuung der Studierenden in ihrer sprachlichen Ausbildung
• Mitwirkung bei der (Weiter-) Entwicklung von Sprachlehrmaterialien, E-Learning-Konzepten und Prüfungsformaten
• Mitwirkung bei der Organisation des Sprachunterrichts und bei sprachausbildungs-bezogenen Projekten

Einstellungsvoraussetzungen:

• Chinesisch auf muttersprachlichem Niveau in Wort und Schrift
• Sehr gute Deutschkenntnisse in Wort und Schrift
• Abgeschlossenes wissenschaftliches Hochschulstudium
• Unterrichtserfahrung in der Sprachvermittlung des Chinesischen auf Hochschulniveau
• Pädagogische Kompetenzen und ein hohes Maß an Teamfähigkeit

Die Universität Tübingen setzt sich für Diversität und Chancengleichheit ein. Sie berücksichtigt daher individuelle Lebenslagen und bittet um entsprechende Informationen. Schwerbehin- derte werden bei gleicher Eignung bevorzugt eingestellt. Die Universität Tübingen strebt eine Erhöhung des Anteils von Frauen in Forschung und Lehre an und bittet deshalb entsprechend qualifizierte Sprachlehrkräfte um ihre Bewerbung.

Ihre Bewerbung:
Bitte senden Sie Ihre Bewerbungsunterlagen (Anschreiben; Lebenslauf; ggf. Schriftenver- zeichnis; Darstellung der Lehrerfahrungen; Zeugniskopien) bis zum 29. Januar 2024 in elektronischer Form als ein PDF-Dokument an das Sekretariat der Sinologie (sinologie@uni- tuebingen.de).
Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich gerne direkt an Frau ZHOU Yi (yi.zhou@uni-tuebingen.de).

Die Einstellung erfolgt durch die Zentrale Verwaltung.

Discourses in Taiwan Travel Literature during the Cold War Era

Traveling abroad is one of the ways to understand the self and the world. This talk uses travelogues during the period of the Cold War Era in Taiwan as the research material. It compares the academic experience of writers of various identities, their motivations, and goals for the overseas trip, and explores the commonality and particularity of their moving memory. In terms of travelogues to the United States, the opportunity to travel abroad during the martial law period was limited, but some writers still had special cultural capital to travel far and published travelogues. For example, International Visitor Programs are mostly discourses about visiting the United States in the context of the Cold War, often implying observations and imaginations of the free world. Most of them compare overseas experiences with the domestic ones. Through the experience of observing world culture, they hope to shape a more ideal society and inspire the idea of reforming Taiwan. The choice of travel routes has become a medium for understanding overseas societies, and travelogues represent the weaving and reorganizing of moving memories. The characteristics of travel narratology are presented in aspects of the location, the capital of travelers, the emotional structure under the context of the times, and representational space. GIS tools are used to visualize text layers. Travelers explore the deep meaning of life between leaving and returning.

"China and Southeast Asia: A 'Democratic Fall', China’s Rise and the Limits of Illiberal Realignment"
Thursday, Dec 14, 2023, 6-8 pm c.t., at Room 1.81 at Keplerstr. 2.

All are welcome.

Time: 18:15 to 19:45
Venue: Seminar room 1.81, Keplerstraße 2 

Termin: Freitag, 1. Dezember, 14 - 20 Uhr und Samstag, 2.12., 10:30 bis 15:30 Uhr

Ort: Kino Arsenal, Hintere Grabenstraße, 72070 Tübingen

Eintritt: alle Dokumentarfilme zusammen 8 EUR, Spielfilm 6 EUR

Alle weiteren Informationen im Programm-Flyer.

The research team, based in Germany, France, UK, and Taiwan, aims to address the complexities of the intimacy-mobility-state nexus that has not received sufficient academic and public attention, particularly in East Asia. By exploring contentious issues in contemporary Chinese and Taiwanese societies—such as digital relationships, access to reproductive rights, dependence on migrants for the care of elders or children, informal networks of migrant workers, relocation for children’s education, and the adoption of alternative education practices as a consequence of migration—this project intends to demonstrate how intimacy and mobility mutually shape and reshape each other within two distinct socio-political contexts: authoritarian neoliberalism (China) and developmental state (Taiwan), respectively.

Bio Kaijun Chen is an Assistant Professor specializing in late imperial Chinese material culture and the history of technology within the Department of East Asian Studies at Brown University. His research primarily centers on the manufacturing of ceramics at court and the dissemination of handicraft knowledge from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. He has authored articles on the intersections of craft and literature, as well as the trade of luxury goods, which have been published in journals such as History and Technology, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, and Reviews, Arts of Asia, National Palace Bi-monthly, and more. Prior to his professorship at Brown University, he held positions at the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and the Frick Collection. He was also a fellow at institutions including the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, UK, Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, and the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey, US. His work has received generous support from the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Society, the Metropolitan Museum, the Geiss-Hsu Foundation, College Art Association, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.

His presenation is titled Taiwan: The Party System of a Young Consolidated Democracy. 

Alex Tan is Professor of Political Science and International Relations and coordinator of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) specialisation (University of Canterbury), Honorary Professor (NZ Defence Force Command and Staff College), Associate Director (NZ Contemporary China Research Centre), Fellow (John G. Tower Center for Political Studies, USA), adjunct University Chair Professor of Political Science (National Chengchi University, Taiwan). He was member of the Public Advisory Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control (2019-21). At UC, he was head of department (2005-08, 2017-22) and recipient of teaching awards including the University Lecturer of the Year (2014), Arts Lecturer of the Year (2014, 2017), Arts Teaching Excellence Award (2015), Arts Lecturer of the Year finalist (2013, 2019). He received his PhD from Texas A&M University, MA (Economics) from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and AB (Economics) from the Ateneo de Manila. Before joining UC, he is tenured associate professor at the University of North Texas, postdoctoral fellow at Southern Methodist University, banker with HSBC, and researcher at Taiwan Institute of Economic Research. He was visiting scholar at universities in the US, UK, Germany, Japan, and Taiwan and represented NZ in Track II security/economic dialogues. Alex is editor of Frontiers in Political Economy and editorial board member of international academic journals such as Political Behavior, Asian Survey, Political Science, Politics and Governance, Issues and Studies, Journal of Asian Security & International Affairs, Croatian Political Science Review: Politicka Misao, Journal of Electoral Studies. He writes extensively in the areas of parties & elections, political economy, Taiwan and Asian politics, and international relations of the Asia-Pacific.

You may also attend online via Zoom:
zoom.us/j/94759700186pwd=eE1rYWJRcFB0SlZ0aGFEN2NHbkoxdz09
Meeting ID: 947 5970 0186
Passcode: 501205

Die Veranstaltung ist öffentlich. Eintritt frei.
Die Lesung findet auf Deutsch und Chinesisch, die Diskussion auf Englisch statt.

Dienstag, 24. Oktober 2023, 18:15-19:45 Uhr
im Hörsaal 001, Keplerstr. 2, 72074 Tübingen
Beschreibung der Veranstaltung:
Schneckensex, anspruchsvolle Gottheiten, ein ungeklärter Kriminalfall – Taiwans Alltag hält die unglaublichsten Geschichten bereit. Lung Ying-Tai hat sie zu ihrem ersten Roman zusammengefügt. Wohin führt uns die Reise zum Fuß des Kavulungan? Im Gespräch mit ihrer Übersetzerin Monika Li spürt Taiwans berühmteste Autorin den vielschichten Antworten auf diese Frage nach.  Philosophischer Jugendroman, Nature writing, Heimatliteratur, eskapistisches Zeitgeist-Portrait, Krimi oder Liebesgeschichte – „Am Fuße des Kavulungan“ bietet viele Lesearten, - welche Themen standen für Lung Ying-Tai beim Schreiben im Vordergrund? Warum wählte sie Taiwans Süden als Hauptrolle? Found in translation – lesen wir das Werk auf Deutsch anders als auf Chinesisch?
Teilnehmerinnen: 
Prof. Lung Ying- Tai (Autorin) zählt zu Taiwans renommiertesten Essayistinnen und Kulturkritikerinnen, die durch ihr Schreiben einen wesentlichen Beitrag zu Taiwans Demokratisierung geleistet hat. Sie war Hochschullehrerin an der University of Hong Kong sowie an der Universität Heidelberg und von 2012 bis 2014 die erste Kulturministerin Taiwans. Mit über 30 veröffentlichten Werken gilt sie als bekannteste Autorin im chinesischsprachigen Raum.
Monika Li (Moderatorin und Übersetzerin) ist zweisprachig – Deutsch und Ungarisch – aufgewachsen und hat Germanistik, Philosophie und Sinologie in Heidelberg studiert. Als Stipendiatin an der National Taiwan University kam sie 2009 zum ersten Mal nach Taiwan. Mit ihrer Familie lebt sie in Berlin und Taipeh, wo sie taiwanische Literatur auf Deutsch übersetzt.
Moderatorin: Jun.-Prof. Emily Graf (Sinologie, Universität Tübingen)

• Was:     Ersti-Treffen
• Wann:  14.10.2023
• Ab:        12:00 Uhr
• Wo:       Sinologiegebäude, Wilhelmstraße 133, 72074 Tübingen

Bei Fragen könnt ihr uns immer unter unserer E-Mail-Adresse (fs.sinospam prevention@googlemail.com) erreichen. Für einen entspannten Uni-Start und -Verlauf sind wir da.
Eure Fachschaft Sinologie

Abstract Taiwan’s legal status has been in contention for over two hundred years that still exercises politicians, historians, and legal specialists to this day. Statements of diplomatic convenience paste over latent conflicts of existential significance for global and local multi-parties/colonizers involved; principles of international law are not only confounded by diverging moral claims and historical projections around the world, but equally by strategic and practical power relations that have continuously morphed without durable agreements or resolutions. As part of Professor Wang’s independently conducted project, this presentation examines some fascinating historical sources and claims to make sense of the very beginnings of Taiwan in international law.

Bio Prof. Dr. Dr. Dong Wang is collection editor of Asian Studies at Lived Places Publishing (New York), H-Diplo review editor, research associate at Harvard Fairbank Center (since 2002), a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and vice chair of the Association for Asian Studies (Ann Arbor) editorial board. Her single-authored books in English are: Tse Tsan Tai (1872-1938): An Australian-Cantonese Opinion Maker in British Hong Kong (2023), The United States and China: A History from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (2nd and rev. ed. 2021), Longmen’s Stone Buddhas and Cultural Heritage: When Antiquity Met Modernity in China (2020), Managing God’s Higher Learning: U.S.-China Cultural Encounter and Canton Christian College (Lingnan University), 1888-1952 (2007), and China’s Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History (2005).

Auf der Grundlage dieses Werkes wird Herr Professor Zimmer am Donnerstag, 13. Juli 2023, 14–16 Uhr c.t. (Rm. 30 Großer Übungsraum) einen Vortrag zum Thema „Mechanismen des alten und neuen Weltmachtanspruchs Chinas“ halten. In seinem Vortrag wird Herr Zimmer ausführen, wie man im heutigen China mit althergebrachten Vorstellungen und Konzepten wie beispielsweise tianxia 天下, „Alles-unter-dem-Himmel“, oder rouyuan, „die Menschen aus der Ferne mit weicher Hand behandeln“, umgeht und was es dabei zu beachten gibt.

Bitte beachten Sie, dass während der Veranstaltung für Zwecke der Universität Tübingen fotografiert und gefilmt wird.

Abstract

This talk will discuss the political transformation of Hong Kong from liberal to illiberal authoritarianism. As residents resisted the erosion of the liberal authoritarian regime and demanded greater democratization, which culminated in a massive and eventually violent protest movement in 2019, the Chinese government became more concerned about the potential threat from Hong Kong to the one-party state in China. In 2020, it seized more power by introducing a National Security Law, which was very vague and all-encompassing and thus constituted a regime change to a closed authoritarian regime. What followed has been the rapid disintegration of civil society, the decline in individual rights, the arrest of many activists, and the development of new illiberal institutions. Moreover, it also eroded the electoral system when it reduced the number of directly elected members of the Legislative Council and the District Council while requiring all candidates to be “patriots” thus allowing it to disqualify anyone. This trend is not unique to Hong Kong as a growing number of countries have experienced processes of autocratization since the late 1990s. The case of Hong Kong, however, combines different dimensions of regime change as the transformation was driven by both external and internal actors. While from outside, the Chinese government has been instrumental in pushing for the deliberalization, local government leaders have willingly allowed the erosion of the liberal system. The current trajectory suggests that the process of autocratization has not yet ended although it is unclear how far the process will proceed and what the long-term consequences of it are.

Biography

Stephan Ortmann is assistant professor at the School of Arts and Social Sciences of Hong Kong Metropolitan University. He has worked on various issues related to political change and civil society in Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Vietnam. His publications have appeared in many reputable journals including Asian Survey, Administration and Society, Asia Pacific Law Review, China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy, Government and Opposition, Pacific Review, and Third World Quarterly. He is the author of Politics and Change in Singapore and Hong Kong: Containing Contention (Routledge, 2010) and of Environmental Governance in Vietnam: Institutional Reforms and Failures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). He has also co-edited a volume with Mark R. Thompson titled China's ‘Singapore Model’ and Authoritarian Learning (Routledge, 2020).

Abstract Based on the Analects and other texts related to Confucius in the classical period and “cosmopolitanism” - a concept with a long history in Western tradition - as a counterpart for comparison, this talk will probe the thought and practice of Confucius as a cosmopolitan and point out the features and significance of the “rooted cosmopolitanism” indicated in the thought and practice of Confucius. The rooted cosmopolitanism embodied by Confucius not only has the basic characteristics of all versions of cosmopolitanism, namely, going beyond territory and ethnicity, but also keeps a dynamic balance between the one and the many, the universal and the concrete, which is usually ignored by the radical cosmopolitanism.

Bio Peng Guoxiang is a Qiu Shi Distinguished Professor of Chinese Philosophy, intellectual history and religions at Zhejiang University. Before he moved to Zhejiang University in 2014, he was a professor at Peking University and Tsinghua University. He was a visiting professor, scholar and fellow at various universities and institutions around the world, including the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2019-2020), University of Frankfurt am Main (2014), Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (2012), National University of Singapore (2012), Ruhr-University Bochum (2009, 2010), Chinese University of Hong Kong (2010), National Taiwan University (2009), Harvard-Yenching Institute (2004, 2007-2008), Wesleyan University (2006), and University of Hawaii (2003-2004). He is the 2016 Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North (Library of Congress, USA) and 2009 Awardee of the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award (Humboldt Foundation and the Ministry of Education and Research, Germany).

The lecture will take place at Wilhelmstraße 19, seminar room 001, at 6:15 p.m.

Ethnic Affinity, Proximity Voting and Indigenous Politics

in the Taiwan Colloquium on Monday, 3 July, 6:15 p.m. in seminar room 002 at Keplerstraße 2. 

Date: 29/6/2023 (Thursday)

Time: 6-8pm c.t.

Venue: Wilhelmstr. 19 SR 001

All are welcome. 

Abstract In this talk, Prof. Chen Boyi focuses on the coastal defense of the Nanzhili region in Ming China (1368-1644). He will show how the Ming state responded to the marine challenges from the wokou (Japanese “dwarf” bandits initially) and how the coastal defense was built along with the process of the war (1549-1564/1565). He will analyze the reason for the defense limitation and the adjustments. The Jun/Bing (Military/Militia initially) structure established at the beginning of the dynasty restricted many of the forces in transferring and leading. His research deals with the duties and relationships of multiple layers of official organizations, and organizations of military administration in this special region, including the garrison army system, prefectures, and counties, as well as the Guards and the Battalions. The whole discussion focuses on how a pre-modern state defended the southern region under its direct control against the coastal threat.

Bio Chen Boyi is Associate Professor in History at Xiamen University. He obtained his PhD at Washington University in St. Louis, and has been Overseas Editor of Qing History Research Correspondence since 2012; Vice Editor of Studies of Maritime History since 2017; Book Review Editor of Crossroads – History of Interactions across the Silk Routes (Brill) since 2019. His research interests include: early modern frontier history, maritime history, and socio-economic history. His publications include: Xiange shanhai (Borders and Orders: Coastal and Maritime Northeastern South China Sea in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) (Jiangxi Colleges and Universities Publishing House, 2019); Mingdai Nanzhili haifang yanjiu (Coastal Defense of South Zhili in Ming China) (Master Thesis, Peking University, 2011; revised version published by Social Science Academic Press, 2023); Beyond the Land and Sea: Diasporic South Fujianese in Hội An, Batavia, and Manila, 1550-1850 (Ph.D. Dissertation, WUSTL, 2019).

From Globalizing Taipei to Referencing European Cities: Referencing as a politicalizing strategy in Taiwan’s urban development

The talk is about how housing policies transfer from one country to the other and will focus on how Amsterdam’s social housing plays an important role in shaping social housing in Taiwan. In the 1990s, Globalizing Taipei was a new urban development strategy for the city that was undergoing economic restructuring and new democratic governance. The new goal transformed the logic of urban planning towards neoliberal urbanism. Housing speculation was intensified by pro-developer urban policies. In 2010, serious problems of housing affordability mobilized the social housing movement, inspired by Amsterdam, where 40% of the total housing stock is social housing. This talk deals with changing urban referencing and housing problems in Taipei City by applying theories of global cities and policy mobility. It argues that the geopolitical situation of Taiwan is a crucial factor in policy mobility in addition to the economic crisis. The desire to be global is always the underlying force for choosing a new learning model. The postcolonial debates do not apply well to Taiwan, because Taiwan has multiple colonial histories and is still in danger of losing its autonomy. 

The talk will also include the co-housing model in Tübingen and how Taiwan’s housing reformers begin to seek other housing models that can tackle the problems of an ageing society and commodification of housing production in Taiwan. 

The event will begin at 6:15 p.m. and take place at Wilhelmstraße 19, seminar room 001. 

• Wiedersehen
• Kennenlernen
• Voneinander lernen

Ehemalige Absolvent:innen werden ihre "Lebensgeschichte" erzählen, und Sie haben die Gelegenheit, mehr zu erfahren über Berufswege und auch die Chance, sich in ein 关系-Netzwerk einzufädeln.

Hierzu gibt es auch ein fröhliches Grillen, organisiert von der Fachschaft Sinologie.
Zusätzliche Speisen (Nachtisch, Salate) können gerne mitgebracht werden.

Weitere Infos: Ulrich Theobald oder Fachschaft Sinologie.

Abstract This talk charts the development of the Dongbuhanhu (董卜韓胡) regime in the Sichuan-Tibetan borderland and how it created the biggest crisis in the Ming’s western frontier in the 15th century. Instead of understanding the rise of Dongbuhanhu from the central government’s perspective, this talk adopts an ontological angle to rationalize the regime’s social-economic development, military agenda, and geopolitical engagement. This talk will first draw the connection between the rise of Dongbuhanhu and the binary social structure in the borderland region, and then scrutinize the significant role of religion in constructing political authority in a borderland world. By examining the on-the-ground connotation and ramification of the tributary system from a material culture standpoint, this talk intends to deepen our understanding of geopolitics, lordship, and livelihood in the Ming’s western frontier.

Bio HU Xiaobai is currently associate professor at Nanjing University, History department. He received his M.Phil from HKUST and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and has worked at City University of Hong Kong and Haverford College briefly. Focusing on frontier history of Ming China as well as the history of Sino-Tibetan interaction, Xiaobai’s dissertation “Unruly Mountains: Competing Visions for China’s Inner Asian Highland, 1368-1600” examines how the Ming China grappled with a place with dense Inner-Asian characteristics and attempted to bring it into the Chinese imperial orbit. This dissertation has received financial support from Henry Luce Foundation, Geiss-Hsu Foundation, and has won the China Times Young Scholar Award.

Abstract. In 1729, Ortai, the Governor-general of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi reported to the Yongzheng Emperor (reigned 1723-35) that Nan Zhang (Lan Sang; nowadays northern part of Laos) pledged its allegiance to the Qing empire through an elephant tribute. Through the propagation of Ortai’s memorials and related court records, the event has been established as an indisputable historical fact that was circulated widely throughout Chinese historiography. This talk attempts to challenge this claim’s authenticity through a comparative reading of Qing memorials, military communication documents, and personal accounts. Putting the “tribute mission” into the context of the Qing’s annexation of Sipsong Panna, the talk reveals how the frontier governors manipulated the correspondence between the em-peror and native headmen to respond to a political crisis resulting from the Qing’s pacification of Yunnan. Particularly, it demonstrates how the Yunnan authority took the Moeng Ham Revolt (1727) as an opportunity to fabricate such a tribute mission within a series of auspicious omens propagated by Ortai and his followers. The regular tributes of elephants and their cross-border mobility, as the author argues, were instrumental in establishing the Qing’s authority in its borderlands.
Bio. Wang Lianming (Ph.D., Heidelberg 2014) is an Associate Professor at the Department of Chinese and History, City University of Hong Kong. His primary areas of interest include but are not limited to global encounters of arts and architecture in early modernity, animal trade, exchange of objects and diplomatic gifts, export art, Ming-Qing gardens, and Qing imperial workshops. His latest volume, Jesuitenerbe in Peking: Sakralbauten und transkulturelle Räume, 1600–1800 (Winter Verlag, 2020) was awarded the 2012 Academy Prize by the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften and shortlisted for the 2021 ICAS Book Prize – German Language Edition. Currently, Wang is conducting a Gerda Henkel Stiftung-sponsored project on Qing global animals. * The paper was finished during Wang’s Balzan Junior Fellowship in Global Environmental History (Prof. Dr. J. Osterhammel) at Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, the University of Freiburg i.Br.

This lecture analyzes the changes in the military administration of Tibet occurring after the Second Gorkha campaign of 1791-1792. It exposes how the negligence of defense matters on the Tibetan plateau after the subjugation of the Dzunghars and blatant ignorance about political
developments south of the Himalayan range posed a veritable threat not just to the jewelry accumulated by the high clergy, but also to the claim of integrity and sovereignty of the Manchus dynasty over their empire. Moreover, the campaign was yet another example of high officials acting on their own behalf without informing the court. In the course and the aftermath of the campaign, the Qing strengthened the defense measures of Tibet and clarified the responsibilities.

'Kinmen as a Shifting Border'

Venue is Keplerstraße 2, seminar room 002. 

Understanding Consultative Politics in China: Ideology, Democracy and Governance

Date: 22nd May 2023

Time: 6-8pm c.t.

Venue: Keplerstr. 2, Seminar Room 002

The topic of his talk is Contested and Negotiated Discourses: LGBTQI Issues in Taiwan's Media

This lecture shows - by employing a Critical Discourse Analysis based on written texts and the involved persons (journalists, activists, writers, lobbyists, politicians) - the almost revolutionary changes within Taiwanese politics and society regarding LGBTQI issues by contrasting two contested and negotiated media discourses: 1) the “AIDSphobia” narrative found in Taiwan’s mass media in the late 1980s. 2) The more recent narrative on marriage equality.During the 1980s, public discussions on topics concerning same-sex desire and non-mainstream gender started in the popular media, in literature and in a variety of academic journals. Most of these media reports were written by so-called experts, psychologists, medical doctors. With the AIDS crisis this narrative was challenged by the activist Chi Chia-wei, and during the accelerating democratisation of Taiwan, LGBTQI issues became widely discussed in feminist magazines (Awakening) and glossy magazines (G&L).
In contrast, more recent discussions in the main-stream and in the LGBTQI-media focused on how same-sex marriage could be introduced. The LGBTQI advocates and their allies, but also the opponents (supported by various Christian lobbyist groups) used the media to bring forward arguments in favour of or against same-sex marriage. While the opponents scored a victory in the 2018 referendum, the media representation shifted after same-sex marriage was introduced. Taiwanese media then were eager to promote Taiwan as the most open and liberal Asian society.
Thus, this talk, will also shed light on the question which standards mass media needs to meet in order to provide a general forum for democratic contestation and democratic legitimacy.
 

Venue is Wilhelmstraße 19, Seminar room 001.  

Abstract Under the paradigm of the Anthropocene, a current focus of Chinese natural history lies in human-induced landscape changes. In the framework of the deforestation debate, scholars examined the development of anthropogenic forests - predominantly wood-producing ones. Except for moriculture, economic trees that produce more specialized products, like oil trees, receive less attention in the field. This study provides an analysis of the georeferenced data from the LoGaRT database. It constructs a spatial narrative of the development of official knowledge on the wood oil tree in a Geographical Information System (GIS). Thereby, it determines whether and how the spread of this knowledge is correlated to the general expansion of gazetteers with methods of spatial statistics. Based on conversion rates of land tax records, this talk further seeks to assess the development of the economic value of wood oil tree plantation and evaluate its regional differences.
Bio Patrick Aberle is a PhD student at the University of Tübingen. His research interests include the Chinese History of Science and Technology as well as Environmental History.

The Chinese tanci 彈詞 (plucking rhymes) fiction Qilin bao 麒麟豹 (The Qilin Leopard, 1822) contains an unusual description of the Philippine Luzon Island as a foreign threat to Ming China. War, conquest, and the first encounters between Chinese and European cultures in the Qilin bao deserve special attention when we investigate the significance of how women were empowered and contained in the narrative through the author’s manipulation of many literary devices, not limited to cross-dressing, divine intervention, inaccuracy of geographical and historical information, as well as the art of magic. Through exploring the notions of gender, race, and imagination of the other, this paper investigates how female characters and the foreign Luzon Island were represented in this tanci work in order to understand the changing perception of womanhood in Chinese society and Luzon’s location and its people, in Chinese ideas of the central kingdom versus barbarians, as well as in world geography.

Dr. Zhang Junlei is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Tübingen, Germany, working on the project “Colonial Orders, Threatened Orders” founded by the DFG (German Research Foundation). Previously Dr. Zhang taught at Grinnell College and Rutgers University in the United States. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Studies from the School of International Languages and Cultures at Arizona State University (2019). Her research interests focus on studies of classical Chinese theater, drama criticism, print culture, and the reciprocal cultural exchanges between China, Taiwan, and the Philippines, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She has published in several renowned peer-reviewed journals, such as Ming Studies, Calíope: Journal of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and Renaissance Quarterly.

Drawing on the remarkable personal archive of a French Catholic missionary, Dr. Li Ji’s new book, At the Frontier of God’s Empire: A Missionary Odyssey in Modern China (Oxford 2023) examines Manchuria during the tumultuous early twentieth century. With vivid vignettes illustrating everyday interaction between indigenous Chinese people and international players, each story and record personalizes the Catholic Church’s expansion in East Asia, the interplay of missions and empire, the intense transformation of Chinese local society, and their profound consequences on the making of modern China. In this talk, Dr. Li will share her experience of discovering the archives, deciphering the manuscripts, and organizing the missionary’s daily writings. She will reflect on the valuable insights gained from working with private and personal documents.

Li Ji is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Hong Kong. She received her B.A. and M.A. at Peking University and her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the relationship between religion, local society, and the making of modern China in a local and global context. She is the author of God’s Little Daughters: Catholic Women in Nineteenth-Century Manchuria (Washington 2015), Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP) and China since the Seventeenth Century to the Present (ed., Brill 2021), and At the Frontier of God's Empire: A Missionary Odyssey in Modern China (Oxford 2023).

Tuesday, May 2: Dr. ZHANG Junlei (Tübingen University)
"Women, Luzon, and the Notion of Center and Periphery in the Qilin Bao 麒麟豹 (The Qilin Leopard, 1822), A Tanci Fiction"

Tuesday, May 9: Patrick Aberle, M.A. (Tübingen University)
"Tree Oil Tax Administration in Late Imperial China"

Tuesday, May 16: Fabian Hiller, M.A. (Tübingen University)
"Zhang Taiyan and Liu Shipei in Japan: 1906-1908. Intellectual Discourses and Personal Relationship"

Tuesday, Jun 6: Dr. Ulrich Theobald MBA (Tübingen University)
"Reorganization of the Tibetan Military in 1793"

Tuesday, June 13: Prof. Dr. WANG Lianming (City University of Hongkong)
"Walking Elephants to Beijing: Mobility and Political Authority in Southwest Qing China"

Tuesday, June 20: Prof. Dr. HU Xiaobai (Nanjing University)
"The Rise of a Mountain King: Religion, Lordship and Tributary Practices in the 15th Century Sichuan-Tibetan Borderland"

Tuesday, June 27: Prof. Dr. CHEN Boyi (Xiamen University)
"Coastal Defense in South Zhili (1368-1644)"

Tuesday, July 11: Prof. Dr. PENG Guoxiang (Zhejiang University)
"Confucius as a Cosmopolitan: Thought and Practice"

Tuesday, July 25: Prof. Dr. Dr. WANG Dong (Shanghai University)
"Taiwan’s Treaty Negotiations up to 1951 and their Aftermath"

Image: Benedetto Castelli’s Della misura dell’acque correnti, 3rd edition (1660) (public domain, left). Excerpt from Verbiest’s manuscript Qiongli xue 窮理學 (1683), Reasoning in Physics (Xingxing zhi litui 形性之理推), juan 9, fol. 28a, on the relation between flow velocity and water height (courtesy of the Peking University Library, right).

Topic: The Taiwan predicament revisited: National identity and the China threat
Date: 9 February 2023 (Thursday)
Time: 6-8pm c.t.
Venue: Lecture Room 001, Keplerstr. 2