MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Event

Oct 27, 2026
Which Global China: Current Debates, Open Frontiers

GLOBAL CHINA TODAY SERIES OVERVIEW

2026-poster-globalchina-oct27

“Global China” has become one of the defining concepts of contemporary China studies. What began as an investigation of a state policy - China's “Going Global Strategy” - and its effects has widened into a productive and innovative field which explores a diverse range of phenomena, reflecting China's complex engagements with, and entanglement in, the global. Yet the concept has not been without its critics, who consider it inherently “othering” and see it as promoting ideas of Chinese exceptionalism.

Why has the concept seen such widespread uptake, and where does its particular usefulness lie? What is its advantage over earlier terms, such as “Greater China”? What do we mean when we say “Global China” - and whose Global China gets told? What blind spots can we uncover? And do its critics have a point: can the concept be used without othering, or without implying Chinese exceptionalism?

In this panel discussion, we invite scholars who have made key contributions to the field of Global China studies to take stock and chart the current debates and open frontiers that lie ahead. Rather than giving definitive answers, the panel stages the concept's productive ambiguity as a starting point for the lecture series as a whole.

  • Erik Baark

    Erik Baark is Professor Emeritus at the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. After graduating with a magister artium degree in Sinology from Copenhagen University in 1977, he received his PhD at the University of Lund in 1986, and his Dphil at the University of Copenhagen in 1998.

    His research has focused on Asian development, in particular China, and includes analysis of innovation policies, high technology entrepreneurship, environmental and climate change issues, and the digital economy. He has published many papers on innovation in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta which include Innovation and China's Global Emergence (National University of Singapore Press, 2021), Lightning Wires: Telegraphs and China's Technological Modernization, 1860-1890 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997) as well as articles in leading international area studies journals, such as The China Quarterly and in innovation research journals, namely Research Policy and the International Journal of Technology Management.

  • Ching Kwan Lee

    Ching Kwan Lee is a professor of sociology at the University of California-Los Angeles. Her recent publications include The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor and Foreign Investment in Africa (Chicago 2017) and Forever Hong Kong: A Global City’s Decolonization Struggle(Harvard 2025). She is the editor of the Cambridge Elements series in Global China. 

  • Tim Summers

    Tim Summers’ teaching and research focus on the international relations and political economy of contemporary China. Tim is the author of four books: Global China: A Critique of Chinese and Western Narratives (Bristol University Press, 2025), China’s Hong Kong: the Politics of a Global City (Agenda, 2019 & 2021), China’s Regions in an Era of Globalisation (Routledge, 2018) and Yunnan – A Chinese Bridgehead to Asia (Chandos, 2013), as well as journal articles on topics from the Belt and Road Initiative and UK-China relations to maritime politics. He has authored policy research papers for both Chatham House and the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London, where he is an Affiliate. In addition to his position in CCS, Tim is Assistant Professor (by courtesy) in CUHK’s School of Governance and Policy Science, and a member of the Policy Research and Global China programmes at CUHK. He is also the Programme Director of the MA in Chinese Studies Programme at CCS.

Address
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Room
Zoom/Online Meeting Platform
Contact and Registration

Please register at the following link:

https://eu02web.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/_nK77sfWSaqhc5cRzSDEBw

This event is part of the LMRG & BCCN Lecture Series "Global China Today." For further information about the series, specific sessions, or questions concerning registration, please contact fmfroehlich@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de.

About This Series

Over the past decades, Chinese infrastructure, capital, firms, workers, media and culture have moved outward across the world at a scale that has made "Global China" one of the defining objects of contemporary scholarship. Yet the term is strikingly unstable: invoked across a wide range of fields, it has been used, alternately, to name a policy, a power mechanism, a method, a relation. The Berlin Contemporary China Network's 2026/27 lecture series takes the fluidity of the concept as its point of departure. It opens by critically asking what kind of thing "Global China" even is and why the concept has seen such widespread uptake. From there, the series follows the concept through diverse and new uses.

It begins with Global China as something the Chinese state projects onto the world, and moves toward a Global China that diasporic communities author for themselves, frequently without Beijing and occasionally against it. The lectures discuss China's international engagement with a post-Cold War order shaped by the West, China's rise in global environmental governance, and the Afro-Asian histories of race, labour and debt that run through the Chinese Caribbean, before a closing panel explores diasporic Chinese people's relationship to their heritage as well as broader narratives around China in the media to ask whose Global China gets told.

Hosted by the Berlin Contemporary China Network (BCCN) and the Lise Meitner Research Group "China in the Global System of Science" (LMRG), the 2026/27 winter term lecture series is conceptualized and organized by Dr. Franziska Marliese Fröhlich and Fiona Anne Bewley from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

2026-10-27T16:00:00SAVE IN I-CAL 2026-10-27 16:00:00 2026-10-27 17:30:00 Which Global China: Current Debates, Open Frontiers GLOBAL CHINA TODAY SERIES OVERVIEW “Global China” has become one of the defining concepts of contemporary China studies. What began as an investigation of a state policy - China's “Going Global Strategy” - and its effects has widened into a productive and innovative field which explores a diverse range of phenomena, reflecting China's complex engagements with, and entanglement in, the global. Yet the concept has not been without its critics, who consider it inherently “othering” and see it as promoting ideas of Chinese exceptionalism. Why has the concept seen such widespread uptake, and where does its particular usefulness lie? What is its advantage over earlier terms, such as “Greater China”? What do we mean when we say “Global China” - and whose Global China gets told? What blind spots can we uncover? And do its critics have a point: can the concept be used without othering, or without implying Chinese exceptionalism? In this panel discussion, we invite scholars who have made key contributions to the field of Global China studies to take stock and chart the current debates and open frontiers that lie ahead. Rather than giving definitive answers, the panel stages the concept's productive ambiguity as a starting point for the lecture series as a whole. Erik Baark Erik Baark is Professor Emeritus at the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. After graduating with a magister artium degree in Sinology from Copenhagen University in 1977, he received his PhD at the University of Lund in 1986, and his Dphil at the University of Copenhagen in 1998. His research has focused on Asian development, in particular China, and includes analysis of innovation policies, high technology entrepreneurship, environmental and climate change issues, and the digital economy. He has published many papers on innovation in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta which include Innovation and China's Global Emergence (National University of Singapore Press, 2021), Lightning Wires: Telegraphs and China's Technological Modernization, 1860-1890 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997) as well as articles in leading international area studies journals, such as The China Quarterly and in innovation research journals, namely Research Policy and the International Journal of Technology Management. Ching Kwan Lee Ching Kwan Lee is a professor of sociology at the University of California-Los Angeles. Her recent publications include The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor and Foreign Investment in Africa (Chicago 2017) and Forever Hong Kong: A Global City’s Decolonization Struggle(Harvard 2025). She is the editor of the Cambridge Elements series in Global China.  Tim Summers Tim Summers’ teaching and research focus on the international relations and political economy of contemporary China. Tim is the author of four books: Global China: A Critique of Chinese and Western Narratives (Bristol University Press, 2025), China’s Hong Kong: the Politics of a Global City (Agenda, 2019 & 2021), China’s Regions in an Era of Globalisation (Routledge, 2018) and Yunnan – A Chinese Bridgehead to Asia (Chandos, 2013), as well as journal articles on topics from the Belt and Road Initiative and UK-China relations to maritime politics. He has authored policy research papers for both Chatham House and the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London, where he is an Affiliate. In addition to his position in CCS, Tim is Assistant Professor (by courtesy) in CUHK’s School of Governance and Policy Science, and a member of the Policy Research and Global China programmes at CUHK. He is also the Programme Director of the MA in Chinese Studies Programme at CCS. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany Zoom/Online Meeting Platform Europe/Berlin public