| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, September 27, 2011 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM | Seminar Room 108N, Munk School of Global Affairs 1 Devonshire Place |
East Asia Seminar Series
The usage of Chinese soft power has elicited much discussion and debate among foreign observers in recent years. However, the Chinese use of soft power is not new; indeed, I would argue that a highly feminized source of soft power (or what I call “maternalist internationalism”) served as a major tool of diplomacy for the Chinese since well before the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. In this talk I discuss the role that elite Chinese women in the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party played in Chinese international relations prior to 1949. I also discuss why and how it is some of these same women sought to make the People’s Republic of China a world leader in the protection of the rights of mothers and their children during the 1950s. Finally I discuss why it is that “maternalist internationalism” was dropped as a form of soft power in the late 1990s.
Kimberley Manning is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Concordia University. Dr. Manning has published in the China Review, Modern China, and the China Quarterly, and is co-editor of the 2011 volume: Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China’s Great Leap Forward and Famine. Dr. Manning is currently completing a monograph on the Chinese women’s movement during the 1940s and 1950s and embarking on a collaborative study of Sino-Tanzanian relations.
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