CIRU Distinguished Lecture Series
China at Another Crossroads: 1947 and 2012
Joseph W. Esherick
Hwei-chih and Julia Hsiu Chair in Chinese Studies Emeritus
University of California, San Diego
Tuesday, February 26, 2013, 4:30 pm
Room 403 Lecture Hall, Alexander Library
169 College Avenue, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Professor Esherick was the holder of the Hwei-chih and Julia Hsiu Chair
in Chinese Studies and History at the University of California, San Diego.
He specializes in the intersection of social developments and political
movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has many
publications including Reform and Revolution in China: the 1911
Revolution in Hunan and Hubei (University of California Press: 1976),
The Origins of the Boxer Uprising, (University of California Press: 1987),
Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 1900–1950,
edited volume (University of Hawaii Press, 2000), and the latest one,
Ancestral Leaves: A Family Journey through Chinese History (University
of California Press, 2011).
Abstract: As China inaugurates a new generation of leadership,
journalists and scholars debate the road that China will follow under their
new President-elect and Communist Party Secretary, Xi Jinping. But this
is hardly the first time that China has stood at a crossroads, and it is interesting and instructive to look at
turning points from the past. In 1947, the Chinese Communist leadership suffered a serious setback at the
hands of the Nationalist Chinese army at its capital in Yan’an. For the better part of a year, the Chinese
Communist leadership retreated to the hills of northern Shaanxi and sometimes almost came into contact
with the Nationalist army, separated from each other at times only within a day’s distance. Last fall, the
speaker retraced a portion of the Chinese Communist leadership’s footsteps in an effort to understand
how the Chinese Communist leaders re-emerged a year later poised for nationwide victory and the
founding of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949. This illustrated talk seeks to show what we
can learn about the past and the present from field work and oral histories in China today.
Parking is free on College Avenue Deck.
For additional information, please visit the website of the Confucius Institute of Rutgers University
(CIRU) at www.ciru.rutgers.edu.
Open to the Public
All Are Welcome