Club Lunch: Xi’s Dreams, Orwell’s Nightmares: Censorship in Today’s China

China is a country of contradictions. On one hand, there are President Xi Jinping’s efforts to present China as a country experiencing a grand national revival and playing a crucial role in protecting globalization. On the other, criticisms of Beijing for enacting policies that bring to mind the Big Brother state imagined in the dystopian novel 1984.

Mr. Wasserstrom discussed current events in China: efforts by the CCP to get Cambridge University Press to remove politically sensitive content from some of its publications – including the Journal of Asian Studies, which the speaker edits – and the very different sorts of moves to limit dissent being made in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. He will also dissect the revelations of the 19th Communist Party Congress.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine, where he edits the Journal of Asian Studies and holds courtesy affiliations with the Law School and the Literary Journalism Program. He has written five books, including China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know and Eight Juxtapositions: China Through Imperfect Analogies from Mark Twain to Manchukuo. He is also editor of The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China.