China's Moral Crisis

In a presentation restricted to USC faculty and graduate students, You-tien Hsing (UC Berkeley) addresses the nature and implications of China's moral crisis.

Prof. You-tien Hsing argues that China's current human development predicament is more a cultural crisis than a social crisis. Income and wealth disparity in China is large and growing and is the subject of much discussion within and outside China. But the cultural crisis originated when ordinary people began clashing with officials over land grabs and other issues. Hsing notes that the state has worked hard to manage and mitigate such protests. The state's use of violence and cash to bring about social stabilization has caused it to lose the trust of citizens and, therefore, some of its legitimacy.

RSVP's are required by Friday, September 13, 2013. Please rsvp at:

http://rsvp.uscannenberg.org/rsvp-page/moral-crisis-china

The presentation and discussion will be moderated by Manuel Castells, who holds the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society. (Castells, incidentally, has just won the Balzan Prize.)

You-tien Hsing holds the Pamela P. Fong Family Distinguished Chair in China studies and teaches in UC Berkeley's Geography Department. She's the author of numerous works including Making Capitalism in China: The Taiwan Connection (1998) and The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land & Property in China (2010) and the co-editor of Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social Activism (2009).