China’s economic and social development over the last 25 years has featured significant elements from the neoliberal playbook–ideologies of competition and human capital, market metrics, efficiency, suppression of labor rights, and more–coexisting with severe state limitations on private property, impediments to the formation of a capitalist class, and, especially in the last ten years, an expansion of state-owned enterprises and party control of the economy. This talk argues for the continued relevance of neoliberalism to an understanding of China today, and suggests that China’s particular and limited neoliberal character offers insights into the nature of contemporary capitalism, and of its antagonists.

Christopher Connery is Professor of Literature at UC Santa Cruz. He has published on early imperial Chinese literati culture (Empire of the Text: Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China); the oceanic mythos in early and late capitalism (“Pacific Rim Discourse”, “The Oceanic Feeling”, “Sea Power”, et al); the global 1960s (The Asian Sixties , The Sixties and the World Event, “The World Sixties”, “The End of the Sixties”); and contemporary Chinese intellectual politics and culture. Since 2010 he has been a member (writer, performer, political consultant) of Shanghai-based, Chinese-language theater group Grass Stage, which has performed throughout China, as well as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and North America.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.

Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.