Description

Japan’s colonial presence in Korea ended sixty-five years ago, but the legacy of this period lingers to this day. Questions debated at the time of annexation continue to be debated at present. One such question concerns the status of the Korean peninsula and the Korean people during this period. Japanese predicted that its colonial-era assimilation policy would eventually foster equal relations between Koreans and Japanese. Neoconservative Japanese today exploit this rhetoric to argue that Japan annexed Korea as an integral part of Japan, rather than appending it simply as a colony, and that Japanese viewed Koreans as fellow national subjects (kokumin) from the time of annexation. They join others in contending that Koreans retained this status until the war’s end, when the United States-led postwar occupation administration returned their status to that of Korean. This paper will consider two problems presented by these arguments. First, their misrepresentation of Japan’s colonial-era intentions and results, as well as Korean reactions to Japan’s policies, offers Japanese today a skewed view of this history. Second, it neglects the post-liberation issues that developed from this policy’s residue, as seen in the violence over lingering “Japanese-ness” that separated political factions. Failure to properly confront these issues brings a tension to the Korea-Japan relationship that impedes reconciliation at a time when more productive voices call for regional unity.

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Mark E. Caprio is professor of history at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Japan. He earned his doctorate at the University of Washington in 2001. The author of Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945, Caprio has published several articles and book chapters on Japanese colonial policy, post-liberation Korean repatriation, and the North Korean nuclear issue.

Description

Historical geographer Karl Ryavec will discuss his work on a regional systems model of Tibet. For this project he is mapping the macroregional structure of the area from 2000 census data, and then using data about the founding of Buddhist temples in history to study how the macroregional structure compares to the past, working with an assumption that clusters of temple foundings indicate richer areas with more population and agricultural resources.

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A prominent cultural and historical geographer of Tibet, KARL RYAVEC is Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. He is the author of the forthcoming An Historical Atlas of Tibet. See more at http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/biographyryavec.aspx

Description

Elaine H. Kim is Professor and head of Asian American Studies and former Chair of the Comparative Ethnic Studies Department at UC Berkeley, where she also served as Associate Dean of the Graduate Division, Faculty Assistant for the Status of Women, and Assistant Dean in the College of Letters and Science. She wrote Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context (1982) and is co-author of Writing Self, Writing Nation: A Collection of Essays on DICTEE by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1994) and Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American Art (2003). She co-edited East To America: Korean American Life Stories (1996), Making More Waves: New Writing By Asian American Women (1997), Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism, (1998), and Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writing (2003). She is associate producer of Slaying the Dragon: Asian Women in U.S. Television and Film (1988), co-producer of Sa-i-gu: From Korean Women’s Perspectives (1993), and executive producer of Labor Women: Asian American Women Labor Organizers (2003). She served as President of the Association and is co-founder of Asian Women United of California, the Korean Community Center of the East Bay, and Asian Immigrant Women Advocates in Oakland, California. She has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship, an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws at the University of Notre Dame.

Description

Bombay cinema (or ‘Bollywood’) has always enjoyed an iconic status among queer subcultures even though explicit references to queer sexuality have been largely absent. The first two decades of the new millennium witnessed dramatic changes in the Indian mediascape following the liberalization of the economy, the ‘opening of the skies’ and the rise of the Hindu Right. Caught in the grip of rapid cultural transformations, Bollywood films become a site of competing discourses around sexuality, providing perceptive, even controversial insights into the articulation of desire. As queer sexuality is rendered visible, cinephiles find themselves engaging with not just the ‘story’ but the ‘telling’ of it.

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Shohini Ghosh is Professor at the AJK Mass Communication Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia, a Central University in New Delhi, India. She is the director of Tales of the Nightfairies (2002) a film about sex workers’ struggle for rights in Calcutta. She is also the author of the book on Deepa Mehta’s Fire for the Queer Classics series published by Arsenalpulp Press, Canada.

Description

Program:
4:00-6:00 Panel discussion and Q&A
6:00 Informal reception

Synopsis:

A discussion of Gallants, directed by Clement Sze-Kit Cheng and Derek Chi-kin, a hit film in Hong Kong this year that brings together many of the old masters of the kung fu film for a final showdown in the streets of Hong Kong. Not unlike the recent American effort, Expendables (2010), Gallants is both homage and a pastiche. The revisitation of favourite genres and stars has become a trend in recent Hong Kong filmmaking, and this panel will seek to explore its sources and implications through a dialogue between critics and the film’s co-director, Clement Cheng.

Panelists:

CLEMENT SZE-KIT CHENG, co-director and screenwriter of Gallants, did his high school education in Vancouver and has worked in the Hong Kong film industry since 1998, starting as an art director. He wrote scripts and was second unit director for Moss (2008) and Skyline Cruisers (2000), as well as commercials and music videos. Gallants is his debut as a feature film director.

PROFESSOR KATHERINE SPRING (Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University) received her PhD in Film Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2007). Her research interests include film sound and music, American film history, and East Asian cinemas. She has published essays and reviews in Cinema Journal, Music and the Moving Image, and Film International, and contributed an essay on Johnnie To to the Hong Kong anthology, Milkyway Image: Beyond Imagination.

COLIN GEDDES is one of Toronto’s best known film programmers. He chooses films for the Toronto International Film Festival’s Real to Reel, Vanguard, Visions and the Midnight Madness programs. A specialist in Asian cinema, Geddes also selects films for Golden Classics Cinema, TIFF Cinematheque, and FantAsia (Toronto). Geddes is now also Festival Director for ActionFest in Asheville, North Carolina. For more than a decade, Geddes curated the Kung Fu Fridays screening series, which showcased martial arts and cult cinema from Asia. Over the past fifteen years, Geddes has rescued abandoned 35mm prints of Chinese films. Recently, he donated 200 feature films from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the University of Toronto. Geddes’s distribution company Ultra 8 Pictures is dedicated to bringing offbeat international films to Canadian movie theatres.

BART TESTA is senior lecturer at the Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto. His teaching includes courses on Chinese cinemas, genre films, European art films and avant-garde cinema. He has authored two books on experimental films, Back and Forth: Early Cinema and the Avant-Garde (1993) and Spirit in the Landscape (1989) and edited an anthology on Pier Paolo Pasolini, as well as journal articles and anthologized essays.

Description

Every Buddhist community has transposed a local tradition of the life of Shakyamuni, the Buddha, into their own artistic expressions andvernacular narratives. The particular editorial and doctrinal choices made in this redaction from classical sources afford insight into the history of cultural adaptations characteristic of each of these communities. This paper presents an overview of this process in the case of “Sugata Saurabha”, a life of the Buddha from the Newar community. Written in the 1940-s by one of Nepal’s greatest modern poets, Chittadhar Hridaya, Sugata Saurabha has been a cultural landmark for modern Newar Buddhists, providing a learned narration of the great sage’s life and also a repository of details about Newar culture through the author’s casting the Buddha’s life details in his own Nepalese context. Professor Lewis’ paper will discuss the text in its Newar context: as a product of the author’s contact with classical sources such as the Lalitavistara, as well as with modern Hindi translations of the Pali Canon published by Rahul Sankrityayana, publications of the Mahabodhi Society, and other sources. The paper will also trace connections with “Sugata Saurabha” and the author’s location in mid-century Nepal.

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Professor Lewis teaches courses on World Religions, as well as courses on comparative religion and modernization. Most of his world religions courses are on the Asian traditions and his seminars treat various schools of Buddhism, his area of research expertise. He has also developed courses on Gardens and World Religions, Gardens and Asian religions, as well as Ecology and Religion.

As a researcher, Professor Lewis is one of the world’s leading authorities on the religions of the mid-montane Himalayan region and the social history of Buddhism. His special research focus for over twenty-five years has been Buddhism in the Kathmandu Valley , particularly the traditions found among the Newars, the indigenous population of Nepal ‘s capital. The translation of landmark epic, Sugata Saurabha: A Poem on the Life of the Buddha by Chittadhar Hridaya of Nepal [with Subarna Man Tuladhar], is first book in Nepal Bhasa (Newari) published in the Harvard Oriental Series (2008).
Beginning with his scholarly training at Columbia University (where he earned his Ph.D. in Religion 1984), Professor Lewis’ research and teaching has been interdisciplinary, linking anthropology and the history of religions. One particular area of expertise is Buddhist narratives and the role of merchants in Buddhist history. In addition to scholarly books and articles published in leading academic journals, Professor Lewis has shot, directed, and produced films for classroom use. (His publications and films are listed elsewhere on this site.)

Professor Lewis has also contributed to a series of successful textbooks. His co-authored textbook, World Religions Today (published by Oxford University Press, now in its third edition), is widely used today in college classes. In 2009, he has been named editor for a new book series, The Buddhist World Today to be published by Oxford University Press.

At Holy Cross, Professor Lewis has been an active member of the Asian Studies Program and twice has served as its director. He is also a member of the Environmental Studies program faculty. Professor Lewis has also been a central participant in the ongoing curriculum review, having chaired the Intellectual Maturation Committee (2003-4) and for which he continues to serve on the Curriculum Review Steering Committee (2004-present).

Description

This presentation will look into the politics of contemporary global land grabbing, the dynamics of food-energy complex, and the key debates around it, including the mainstream position for a ‘Code of Conduct’. It will also critically examine competing positions by various (trans)national social movements and their allies around these debates. Insights from land grabbing in the Philippines will be discussed, with glances at other Southeast Asian countries. The presentation will conclude by mapping key challenges in academic research around land issues and on dynamics of (trans)national agrarian movements today.

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Saturnino (‘Jun’) Borras Jr. Is Canada Research Chair in International Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is a Fellow of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute (TNI) and of the Oakland-based Food First, and is Adjunct Professor at the College of Humanities and Development, China Agricultural University in Beijing. His research interests include land reform, land grabbing, and (trans)national agrarian movements.

Description

This paper discusses suicide in the central Indian steel town of Bhilai, the incidence of which has increased dramatically over the past two decades. This urban data is set against the backdrop of the epidemic of ‘farmer suicides’ that has also recently swept through several Indian states, that is widely attributed to rural indebtedness caused by the commercialization of agriculture and the liberalization of the economy, and that has attracted enormous media attention. Though the Chhattisgarh state government angrily disputes the facts, recent press reports have suggested that its rate of ‘farmer suicide’ is the highest in the country. The apoplectic denials of the state government are, of course, politically motivated; but the claims of those who have sought to highlight the problem are not politically innocent either. One of their effects is to divert attention from the urban situation where the problem – which remains largely unrecognised – is almost certainly greater. That’s my first empirical claim. The second is that, at least in the context of Bhilai, the incidence of suicide is significantly higher amongst the aristocracy of public sector labour than in other ‘fractions’ of ‘the working class’; and I attempt to explain why. The third claim is that the official suicide rate, and the motives attributed to suicide victims in the national statistics, are in significant measure an artefact of the law that surrounds suicide and the fear of police harassment. The paper concludes with some critical reflections on Durkheim’s theory of suicide.

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JONATHAN PARRY is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has done field research in various parts of north and central India on various different topics. His publications include Caste and Kinship in Kangra (Routledge 1979), Death in Banaras (Cambridge University Press, 1994), Death and the Regeneration of Life (ed,with M. Bloch, Cambridge University Press, 1982), Money and the Morality of Exchange (ed. With M. Bloch, Cambridge University Press, 1989), The Worlds of Indian Industrial Labour (ed, with J. Breman and K. Kapadia, Sage Publications, 1999), Institutions and Inequalities (ed, with R. Guha, Oxford University Press, 1999), Questions of Anthropology (ed, with R. Astuti and C. Stafford, Berg, 2007) and Industrial Work and Life: An Anthropological Reader (ed, with G. De Neve and M. Mollona. London: Berg, 2009).

Description

JOHN ENGLISH, acclaimed biographer of Pierre Trudeau, and ALEXANDRE TRUDEAU, film-maker and author of a forthcoming book that offers an intimate portrait of present-day China (the country that has evolved since his father’s landmark decision to recognize the People’s Republic).

This event provides a unique opportunity to hear the reflections of two superbly qualified speakers concerning the origins of one of Canada’s most significant global relationships — and the complicated road that has brought the two countries to 2010.

Description

This paper explores the strategies of a Mongolian Buddhist monastery to revive their community within the contentious ideological landscape of post-socialist Mongolia. Delgeruunchoira khiid was once a thriving monastic complex in the central region of the Gobi Desert (Dungov aimag). In 1937 as part of the socialist persecution of Buddhism, the entire complex was destroyed and the 800 monks killed, imprisoned or disrobed. The eclectic and famous abbot Zawa Damdin Lam (1867-1937) also died that same year. Nearly seventy years later, a newly identified incarnation (khubilgan) of Zawa Damdin Lam re-founded the Gobi monastery of his predecessor, quickly attracting young monks, lay disciples and funding. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted intermittently over the past seven years, this paper surveys the successful re-founding of this community by highlighting two interwoven instances of co-option and re-deployment. The first concerns the construction of a temporal framework articulating traditional Mongol-Tibetan historiographic tropes of pre-prophesized Buddhist expansionism and the inextricable link of Mongol ethnicity and the Buddhist faith. This appeal to the legitimizing force of Buddhist time and chronology is offset by the de-temporalization of the symbolic figure of Zawa Damdin Lam himself. As an allegory of pre-socialist Mongolian culture, he is now localized and available in the person of the contemporary incarnation, who performs a continuum of Mongolian Buddhism resilient to, and literally prior to, the socialist purges and the upheavals of the new market economy. I reflect upon how this notion of time challenges a straightforward qualitative analysis of the appropriation by this community of the tripartite development rhetoric of free market economics, Christian missionizing and secularization; all pervasive foreign discourses aimed at ‘developing’ the Mongols. I argue that it is largely through the construction of a dynamic and convincing Buddhist time, representative of exchanges of Buddhist bodies, cultural knowledge and religiosity, that this one community has flourished where others have floundered in post-socialist Mongolia.

Matthew King is a third year doctoral student in Religious Studies. His research focuses on the form and content of early-modern Mongolian Buddhist historiography, and the Tibet-Mongol cultural interface more broadly. He has been on several research trips to Mongolian and Tibetan cultural areas, and while his dissertation project is primarily a historical project, he continues to conduct a long term study on the post-socialist revivalist project of one Mongolian monastic community, which will form the basis of this presentation.

Description

Much of contemporary discourse about the emergence of democracy and political sovereignty can be traced to modern narratives linking the rise of the nation-state in Europe to the separation of church and state. Thus the idea that concept of sovereignty is the exclusive property of the modern nation-state has become part of the myth of liberal modernity. In this lecture I want to critically examine the doctrine of Guru Khalsa (the idea that sovereignty is (jointly) located in the order of the Khalsa) by reading the event of the Khalsa’s creation in 1699 as a narrative drama that deals intrinsically with the loss of the sacred (or the death of the god-king) as an essential step on the way to the achievement of a political community (imagined or otherwise). Although my talk will make reference to the deployment of the central myth at the heart of the Khalsa narrative in different time periods (specifically the 18th century and in the late 20th century) as a means for gathering the Sikh community, the crux of my argument will focus on the political theology of the event. I shall argue that the loss of the sacred enacted by the 10th Guru of the Sikhs as part of his new initiation ceremony in 1699, inverts the normative myth of the nation state and gives rise to radically different notions of sovereignty, political community and democracy.
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Arvind Mandair is S.B.S.C. Assistant Professor of Sikh Studies at the University of Michigan. His recent publications include: Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality and the Politics of Translation (Columbia University Press, 2009); Secularism and Religion-Making co-edited withwith Markus Dressler (Oxford University Press, in press 2011). Teachings of the Sikh Gurus (Routledge, 2005) co-authored and translated with Christopher Shackle; He edits the journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture and Theory and is Assistant Editor of the journal Culture and Religion, both published by Routledge.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

China’s media and intellectual fields have most often been studied in their respective relationships with the Chinese party-state. This talk, however, draws attention to the increasingly important communication politics between the media and intellectual fields in China’s brave new and post-reform symbolic environment. The first part provides an overview of key factors that have shaped the evolving politics of intellectual publicity in the Chinese communication system, including media commercialization, the contradictory developments of professionalization and corruption both in the media and intellectual fields, the increasingly central role of the Internet in Chinese public communication, the ideological polarization of the Chinese intellectual sphere, as well as the intensification of globalized intellectual flows. The second part offers two contrasting case studies and discusses signs of both hope and despair in the current modes of Chinese media and intellectual interaction from the perspective of public communication for social justice. The first case illustrates that the right academic who not only dares to speak out at the right time but also has the skills to create a media event has the potential to make critical interventions in major public policy debates in China’s brave new media world. In the second case, however, one witnesses how the destructive logics of media sensationalism, academic corruption, and ideological polarization have intersected to spectacularize intellectual in-fights and distract both the media and the academy from engaging the public around the urgent political economic and social issues of the day. This has brought misfortune not only to the individual scholars involved, but also to China’s already highly constrained public sphere.

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Dr. Yuezhi Zhao is Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Global Communication at the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University. Her work concerns both domestic Chinese communication politics and the role of media and information technologies in the global transformations linking to China’s real and imagined rise as a major world political economic power. Dr. Zhao’s recent books include the single-authored Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict and the co-edited Global Communications: Toward a Transcultural Political Economy, both published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2008.

Description

Aravind Eye Care System, located in southern India, annually provides approximately the same number of cataract surgeries as Canada, but at less than 1% of the cost. Each year, Aravind System conducts 250,000 cataract surgeries, while Canada conducts about 200,000 (based on an estimated cataract surgical rate of 6,000 per million, for 34 million people). Clearly it is less expensive to operate in India, but do the economic and cultural differences explain the difference in cost between the two settings? Yes, in part, but the challenge presented to Canada by the Aravind System – dedicated to high volume, high quality, and low cost service delivery – is whether we can learn its lessons on efficiency and productivity.

Dr. Bassett’s research focuses on the systematic review of drug therapy and drug funding policy. He has received recognition for his skill in the critical appraisal of drug therapies, and has considerable background in the practical issues impacting public plan formularies. His international work focuses on the prevention and treatment of blindness in Tibet, Nepal, India and Tanzania. He has acted as the field director of a population-based survey of blindness, and has developed community ophthalmology programs in remote areas. Dr. Bassett is a practicing physician with a PhD in medical anthropology from McGill University.

Description

Professor McGahan’s research on global health deals with a wide range of topics, including issues relating to the dissemination of new business models – what we often call “scaling up”. In this session, she will frame the imperative for scaling up innovative models for global health by describing how population demographics are changing the game. Professor McGahan’s argument is that innovative and technically sophisticated approaches are essential, but insufficient on their own in creating better health outcomes. Innovative organizational approaches are equally important for improving global health.

Anita M. McGahan is Associate Dean of Research, PhD Director, Professor and Rotman Chair in Management at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. She is cross appointed to the Munk School of Public Affairs; is a Senior Associate at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard University; and is Chief Economist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Division for Global Health and Human Rights. Her credits include two books and over 100 articles, case studies, notes and other published material on strategic issues of competitive advantage, industry evolution, and financial performance. McGahan is currently pursuing a long-standing interest in the inception of new industries, and in the implications for international development and global health. She has been recognized as a master teacher for her dedication to the success of junior faculty and for her leadership in course development and in 2010 was awarded the Academy BPS Division’s “Irwin Distinguished Educator Award.” A passionate advocate of liberal undergraduate education, McGahan has championed the introduction of a history curriculum in Business Schools.

Description

Please note that this event is open to STUDENTS ONLY.

Description

Why is it right that a child born in the developing world is 13 times as likely to die compared to one born in Canada? Why is it fair that a woman in the developing world is 50 times as likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth? It’s not right and it’s not fair. innovation can help to improve these and other challenges in global health. In 2010, Canada launched Grand Challenges Canada, a non-profit foundation funded by foreign aid that funds global health innovation. We will discuss Grand Challenges Canada and its approach. We will examine the role of domestic innovation in the developing world as a sustainable way to improve global health. Finally, we will explore the relevance of global health innovation to Canada to discover that the benefits include not only altruism but also clues on how we can innovate on value, and deflate costs, in our own health system.

For readings cruise websites www.grandchallenges.ca and www.mrcglobal.org

Professor Peter A. Singer is CEO of Grand Challenges Canada, Professor of Medicine, Sun Life Financial Chair in Bioethics, and Director at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, University Health Network and University of Toronto. Singer’s research is on life sciences and the developing world – how technologies make the transition from lab to village.

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Information is not yet available.

Description

Domestic private enterprises (DPEs) are continuously booming as a result of the development of market economy especially in the first decade of twenty-first century in China. This talk however is not about the causes of the DPEs’ emergence or prediction of their future development. It is about the following observation from my field research on DPEs in 2008: privately owned enterprises, particularly regarding labor control, adopt many managerial strategies and methods that were popular in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) under the socialist system. What is more intriguing is that DPEs share with SOEs the similar managerial rhetoric about relations between owners/managers and workers. This observation challenges the “sweatshop” image associated DPEs. It also raises questions about our understanding of the power relations formed in DPEs. I argue that those managerial strategies, methods and rhetoric, along with newly implemented so called “modern management”, have inevitably constructed a similar paternalistic type of power relations in DPEs as it is often observed in SOEs.

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Xiaodan Zhang is an Assistant Professor at the The City University of New York, where she teaches sociology. Her research focuses on changing labor relations under economic reforms in China. She is also interested in women’s social movements in China and how they adopt, apply and redefine feminist theories from the West. Recent publications include:”Trade Unions under the Modernization of Paternalist Rule in China” in Working USA: the Journal of Labor and Society and “Hidden Forms of Bargaining on China’s Shopfloor” in International Labor and Working Class History. Zhang has also written on the representation of migrancy and China’s modernization in documentary films.

Description

This year celebrates the 21st anniversary of the promulgation of the Basic Law – a mini-constitution that would govern Hong Kong for 50 years until 2047, through the application of the principle of “One Country, Two Systems”. The Basic Law provides for the continued operation of the common law and capitalist economy within Hong Kong. To promote the awareness of the Hong Kong Basic Law among the younger generation of Canadians of Chinese/Hong Kong background, and Chinese debate activities, the Ontario Inter-Collegiate Chinese Debate Alliance (OCDA), in collaboration with the Asian Institute of the University of Toronto, and with support from the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO), will organize a ‘Hong Kong Cup’ Basic Law Chinese debate competition amongst elite teams from Chinese debate clubs of all major universities in Ontario.

The final match of the competition will be held at the Asian Institute of the University of Toronto at the Munk Centre, details as follows –

Date/Time: Sunday, January 30, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
A networking luncheon session will be held at the Munk School venue after the debate.

Judging Panel: Former Hong Kong legislator 譚惠珠 Miss Maria Tam, who is a member of the Committee for the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and a deputy to China’s National People’s Congress, will be one of the judges, amongst others.

FREE ADMISSION – REGISTRATION IS A MUST

Description

As part of the Sino-British agreement on the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, both governments agreed on the Basic Law, a mini-constitution that would govern Hong Kong for 50 years until 2047, through the application of the principle of “One Country, Two Systems”. The Basic Law provides for the continued operation of the common law and capitalist economy within Hong Kong.

Former Hong Kong legislator Ms Maria Tam, who is a member of the Committee for the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and a deputy to China’s National People’s Congress, will speak at the symposium together with Dr Ming K. Chan from Stanford University, author of the book “The Challenge of Hong Kong’s Reintegration with China”, on various issues regarding the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s constitutional reform, universal suffrage, and its present and future political aspiration.

Dr Kui-Wai Li of the City University of Hong Kong will talk about how to synchronize the economic development of Hong Kong with that of the Mainland while maintaining and giving full play to the Hong Kong advantages. Other speakers, including Dr Eric Fong of the Sociology Department of the University of Toronto, and Dr Eilo Yu of the Department of Government and Public Administration of the University of Macau, will explore Hong Kong’s social changes, its globalization versus nationalization, as well as the effect of its close educational relationship with the Mainland. The speakers will also present their perspectives on the situation in Hong Kong and the Mainland “50 years” after Hong Kong’s return to its motherland.

Date: January 31, 2011 (Monday)
Time: Symposium 11:00 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Lunch Reception 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Venue: Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library
(Robarts Library Building, 130 St George Street)

FREE ADMISSION; REGISTRATION IS A MUST

Program Rundown:

1100 Opening Remarks by Senator Vivienne Poy (TBC)
1105 Introduction of Keynote Speaker by Dr Joseph Wong
1110 Keynote Speech by Ms Maria Tam
1125 Presentations by:
Dr Ming K Chan, Stanford University: Challenges and Opportunities in Transforming China’s Hong Kong Toward the 2047 Merger-Convergence
Dr Kui-Wai Li, City University of Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Economy: the First Decade and the Road Ahead
Dr Eric Fong, University of Toronto: The Community of Hong Kong Immigrants in Toronto Since Hong Kong Has Reintegrated with China
Dr Eilo Yu, University of Macau: The Implication of Hong Kong’s “One Country, Two Systems” Experience on Beijing’s Policy toward Taiwan and Macao
12:25 Panel Discussion and Q & A conducted by Dr Jack Leong
12:45 Launching of “Hong Kong Handover” Online Resource
Introduction of the Online Resource by Dr Jack Leong
Ceremony officiated by: Senator Vivienne Poy (TBC), Chief Librarian Carole Moore, Dr Jack Leong, Ms Maria Tam, and Ms Maureen Siu
1300 Interaction and buffet lunch at the Canada-Hong Kong Library

Speaker bios:

Dr Ming K. Chan
Dr Chan is a Visiting Scholar in the Centre for East Asian Studies at Stanford University with a PhD in East Asian History. He is also the coordinator of the Hong Kong Documentary Archives at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. A former member of the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong, he is the author or editor of ten books, including Crisis and Transformation in China’s Hong Kong (2002), The Challenge of Hong Kong’s Reintegration with China (1997), and Precarious Balance: Hong Kong between China and Britain: 1842–1992 (1994).

Dr Eric Fong
Dr Fong is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto with a PhD in Sociology. He specializes in the research fields of race and ethnic relations, immigration, and ethnic businesses. Dr Fong has published extensively in the areas of racial/ethnic residential patterns and ethnic businesses. He is the President of the North American Chinese Sociologist Association (NACSA) and a board member of the Research Committee on Sociology of Migration of the International Sociological Association.

Dr Kui-Wai Li
Dr Li is an Associate Professor in the College of Business at the City University of Hong Kong with a PhD in Banking and Finance. He specializes in the areas of financial and economic development, industry and trade, with a research focuses on China and other Asian economies. He is the author of multiple books, including The Hong Kong Economy: From Recovery to Restructure (2005); Financial Repression and Economic Reform in China (1994). Dr Li has worked as a consultant to international institutions, foreign governments and businesses. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library at the University of Toronto.

Dr Eilo Wing-Yat Yu
Dr Yu is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Macau with a PhD in Philosophy. His specializes in the research areas of party development and organization, politics and public administration of Hong Kong and Macau, and Taiwan Politics. He is the author of Election and Democracy in Hong Kong: The 1998 Legislative Council Election (1999); and Tale of Two Cities: Political, Social and Economic Development of Hong Kong and Macao (2003). Dr Yu is also a co-investigator of the Hong Kong Transition Project, and a member of the Association for Asian Studies and Hong Kong Political Science Association.