China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom

UCLA Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by Richard Baum on forty years of learning about and interacting with the People's Republic of China.

This audacious and illuminating memoir by Richard Baum, a senior China scholar and sometime policy advisor, reflects on forty years of learning about and interacting with the People's Republic of China, from the height of Maoism during the author's UC Berkeley student days in the volatile 1960s through globalization. Anecdotes from Baum's professional life illustrate the alternately peculiar, frustrating, fascinating, and risky activity of China watching--the process by which outsiders gather and decipher official and unofficial information to figure out what's really going on behind China's veil of political secrecy and propaganda. Baum writes entertainingly, telling his narrative with witty stories about people, places, and eras.--China Watcher will appeal to scholars and followers of international events who lived through the era of profound political and academic change described in the book, as well as to younger, post-Mao generations, who will enjoy its descriptions of the personalities and political forces that shaped the modern field of China studies.

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Richard Baum is distinguished professor of political science at UCLA and director emeritus of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. His publications include China in Ferment: Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution; Prelude to Revolution: Mao, the Party, and the Peasant Question, 1962-1966; Reform and Reaction in Post-Mao China: The Road to Tiananmen; and Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping. He is the founder and list manager of Chinapol, the world's largest dedicated listserv for professional China scholars, journalists, and policy analysts. His current research focuses on (1) the impact of China's post-Mao reforms on local governance in the PRC; (2) the impact of globalization on political development in post-reform China; and (3) US-China relations and the prospects for war and peace in the Taiwan Strait. Dr. Baum has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary China, The China Quarterly, China Information, Asian Survey, and Communist and Post-Communist Studies. As a media commentator, Professor Baum shares his expert knowledge of Chinese Politics with CNN International, the BBC, NPR, the Asian Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Voice of America (VOA).

Prof. Baum spoke at USC in April 2010 and September 2007.