Professor Yuan Ming 袁明教授

Professor, School of International Studies
Director, Center of American Studies
Peking University

Biography
Professor Yuan Ming is a world-renowned scholar in international relations. She is currently Professor of International Relations at Peking University. A long-term member of the Board of the United Nations Foundation, Professor Yuan has served on the University Grants Committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from 2008 until 2014. In the past, Professor Yuan also served as a Senior Research Fellow or Senior Counselor at the Carter Center, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Center for International Studies and the Brookings Institution. She is a Council Member of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs. Professor Yuan served as a trustee of the Asia Society in New York and as a board member on the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 1998 to 2013.

Abstract
What transformations has globalization imposed on the international cultural landscape? And what are the ramifications of these transformations on China’s international engagement? In this lecture, Professor Yuan Ming examines these questions with first-hand stories, outlining the cultural complexities and challenges that have emerged in the international arena since the 1990s with the advent of accelerated economic globalization. Her argument forwards three critical trends that have taken place in the cultural arena in the wake of this global process.

In the first part of the lecture, the speaker opposes an “End of History” type of Americanization or Westernization explanation. The global cultural arena has seen the dissolution of the traditional West vs. Non-West dichotomy, a development that has been marked by the re-assertion of multiple cultural hubs and the re-emergence of "culture" as a major factor influencing international relations.

The second part focuses on how economic globalization has had a destabilizing as well as reinforcing effect on the self-identities and self-conceptions of many societies and countries, with "Who Are We?" dominating their cultural reflection.

Finally, Professor Yuan explores whether globalization has propelled a democratization of culture in traditional civilizational zones which have seen the appearance of various new "bottom-up" powers that are benefiting from this new-found environment. These three trends, Professor Yuan argues, have also affected China and, more significantly, have confronted it with a number of unprecedented challenges of a "cultural type" necessitating new political thinking as well as innovative policy solutions.