Chinese Politics: Lecture 1: Introduction and Course Overview

so good afternoon welcome to Chinese politics my name is Rory tricks I will I was going to say I will be your professor for this semester I suppose that's obvious so today this is kind of an intro to the course day I just want to give you a sense of what we're trying to accomplish as a group this semester I know some of you are probably kind of shopping courses so I just want to give you an overview of kind of what's expected and and what the key questions are so really we have three goals for today the first is I want to do a quick class exercise about defining contemporary China how can we how can we describe what's going on the second is to introduce kind of the big key questions for the course namely this question of resilience of the Chinese Communist Party and then the third thing is I do want to kind of get into logistics and so forth okay good yes how's morale that's pretty good that's pretty good that's pretty yeah usually it starts there goes down and then maybe it comes back up by the end of the semester so all right that's where we go all right so first question what I want you to do is I want you to introduce yourself to the person next to you say hello shake their hand you don't have to put your arm around them that was a lot all right all right all right [Music] okay okay okay okay okay there's a lot of you so it's I need to be more loud I want you to discuss this question is the People's Republic of China democratic okay so take one minute talk with the person next to you talk about this question should we consider the current People's Republic of China a democracy it's okay if you don't really know the answer we're going to get there I get more volume I get more fine [Applause] hello all right let's bring it back all right so is the People's Republic of China democratic if you think yes raise your hand if you think that's all right if you think no raise your hand if you think I don't know raise your hand okay so first of all what is a democracy it's like the most basic question in political science but it's actually hard to pin down so when you think democracy what comes to mind raise your hand sure voting all right anything else what else comes to mind yes power resting with the people what else yeah multiple parties sure yeah being informed okay anything else I'm gonna just call all over the room yeah basic ideas of accountability and input anything else yeah here yep okay freedom of speech free media freedom of association yeah okay being accountable to the electorate so they're strict all of these things that you're talking about kind of human rights freedom of speech freedom of association accountability representation those are are things that we associate with democracies right so when we think about American society or Western Europe these are things that we associate in general the strict definition that kind of the political science you definition of democracy does hinge on this idea of elections so a political regime is democratic if and only if its rulers are selected through free and fair elections and when people lose elections they matter and people leave office and so much of the much of the world much of the authoritarian world we do see elections being held but they're either not free or fair or when the dictator loses nothing really happens and and he stays in office so according to this definition this is by the way this are your answers to the survey if you haven't taken that sir please do because it's a way for us to get to know you and your interest but I asked some of you this question on a survey so the overwhelming answer was no but some people did say yes according to political scientists most political scientists would agree that China the People's Republic of China today would not be considered democratic and so if you're not democratic the converse of that is what we would call an authoritarian regime non democratic dictatorship you'll hear a lot of different words I prefer to use the word authoritarian but I did want to say that the word democracy in China today is contentious and actually one thing we're going to discuss throughout the course is how the Chinese Communist Party which is the party that does govern China how they use the language of democracy and speak in the concepts of democracy and so this is one of the early uses of the term for the Chinese Communist Party this is a speech by Mao Zedong in 1949 just a just prior to the establishment of the People's Republic he says democracy is practiced within the ranks of the people who enjoy the rights of freedom of speech assembly Association and so on the right to vote belongs only to the people not to the reactionaries so he seems to be dividing the population into different groups the combination of these two aspects democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries is what's known as the People's Democratic dictatorship so this concept itself seems a little bit like an oxymoron right to have a democratic dictatorship but there's a specific ideological meaning behind this which we're going to talk about over the course of the semester I should also say that if you ask Chinese citizens how they feel about the level of democracy in the country this is data from the World Values Survey which is a a cross national survey this is conducted I guess in around 2008 the little arrow there is the point average for China we noticed that Chinese citizens rate the level of democracy better in their country than American citizens do in the United States ok so many Chinese citizens at least on surveys believe that their country is democratic and that the Chinese Communist Party is responsive and representative so that's important to keep in mind ok next question is the People's Republic Socialist I want you do the same thing take one minute talk to the person next to you talk about the question don't talk about your day or something like actually please just we're here for 50 minutes be with me let's do it answer the question is the People's Republic socialist what do you think go [Applause] okay I saw like 95% of you talking to each other some people are just sort of staring off so please take these moments this is you know this is kind of cheesy but I think it's actually important in lectures if you're not moving and talking you're actually kind of slowly become comatose over time there's actually been studies that show that sitting in a lecture is like the worst way to learn so I try to make lectures more interactive so please please please go through it with me all right so is the People's Republic of China socialist what do you think raise your hands if you think yes so it's fun raise your hand if you think No raise your hand if you say maybe don't know I also would might be in the maybe don't know category myself which is sad because I'm the one teaching the course but all right so well what is socialism again let's start with the definition it's in some sense and even more confusing concept than the concept of democracy but how would you how do what do we think of when we think of the word socialism put yourself out there take a risk live the dream what do we think here right back here yeah please yes well well there's a young woman behind you and then you can go yeah okay so this idea of redistribution okay okay so we tend to think of socialist societies as having a low income gap yeah okay so administration got through the state itself through the government yeah okay so a lot of central economic organization public ownership yeah anything else yeah nationalized industries what we might know as state-owned enterprises okay so socialism especially actually in political discourse in the United States is a is actually a very muddled term the strict kind of theoretical definition is the public ownership of the means of production which gets this idea of state ownership nationalized industries and so forth that said all the other things we associate so socialism is often used to describe communist regimes Soviet regimes we also you'll you'll notice that there are there's an idea out there called democratic socialism which is democratic regimes that do redistribute and have a larger social safety net so in my mind when I hear the word socialism I mind tends to go in those two directions this is a system that has a a large state-owned sector and also potentially a lot of redistribution in a more egalitarian distribution of wealth so again this is what how you all answered the question so there was some division in the class the things I wanted to emphasize here is again we see some contradiction within the Chinese political system and these are contradictions we're going to explore as a group so the Chinese Communist Party today consent continues to espouse the language of socialism okay in 2018 the Chinese Communist Party uses the language of socialism and we often see phrases like socialism with Chinese characteristics and so forth but this is Xi Jinping in 2014 I should also say as a pause I post all my lectures online immediately after lecture so do not be copying down what's on the slides you frankly don't need to use your computers at all you can just be present it's going to be fine but just don't worry about cop now it's on the slide so she's jumping in 2014 gave a speech that they have two goals as a Communist Party is to become a model a moderately prosperous society and turned china into a modern socialist country and renew realized the chinese dream and the great renewal of the chinese nation okay so this is socialism this language of socialism is still being used that said there are some contradictions so this is a graph from The Economist that's a little dated now I haven't found an updated version but this is the share of the economy that is owned by the state in terms of assets profits and sales and we see a slow receding of this over time and if we drew the line backwards back to the Mao era where the state ownership of the economy was almost a hundred percent so we've seen a long downward trend in state ownership over the economy and coinciding with that we've seen a rise in inequality this is a chart from a paper by you SIA who is a sociologist here some of you might know who you might have taken this course the red line indicates the level of inequality the Gini coefficient which is a measure of inequality in contemporary China over time the best we can estimate it and then the blue line is the United States and what we see is that China under the Mao period was extremely equal in fact one of the most equal countries in the world except poor and now we have one of the most unequal societies in the world more unequal than the United States in terms of its income distribution and this is a country that is espousing socialism okay so the final question I will ask and maybe we won't do a debate for this one just in the interest of time is the People's Republic of China well governed I will do it just you know for symmetry sake take 30 seconds this time offer an argument to the person next to you what does it mean to be well let's just answer the first question what does it mean to be well governed when you think of well governed what words come to mind please [Applause] [Applause] okay let's bring it back so when you hear the word well-governed what comes to mind just we can say some terms economy yeah rule of law yeah corruption or lack of corruption not correct yes unless you like corruption it's depends on you what else yeah safety security yeah public approval maybe legitimacy public opinion that sort of thing efficiency okay lack of waste yep happiness satisfaction yes a system of succession whoo all right stability stability political stability anything else yeah transparency okay so these are these are all great terms this is a definition from I believe the UN yeah so the you had economic and social commission and this is how international institutions tend to define good governance and you've hit on a lot of these concepts so it's participatory citizens have a voice its consensus oriented its accountable so the government is accountable to the population it's transparent we have information it responds to citizen demands its effective and efficient someone over here said that to excellent and it's inclusive and equitable and follows the rule of law so this is tends to be how we define good governance and if you look at some metrics on some of these measures the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government do not perform particularly well this is data from Transparency International which is a anti-corruption organization and they produce what's known as the corruption percent perceptions index you can look at their website and download this type of data if it's interesting to you China tends to fall in the bottom half of countries with respects to corruption and so if we look at other indicators for freedom of speech freedom of you know human rights these sorts of things the regime does not do particularly well but some of you said public opinion satisfaction happiness again if we look at survey data the Chinese Communist Party is quite successful at least according to survey data so this is a again from the World Values Survey confidence in government worldwide the Chinese Communist Party according to survey data has the second highest levels of confidence in the world second only to Vietnam now I hear murmurs I don't know if this is murmurs of skepticism excitement I don't know what it is one thing we're going to talk about later on in the course is can we trust this type of data so in a system which is not democratic and you're asking people to evaluate their governments are there reasons to believe they might be saying they like the government even though they don't this is a concept known as preference falsification but people in authoritarian systems say they've supported a regime even though in their heart of hearts they don't and so we're gonna talk about that that concept and whether or not it might help us understand so when I see this this number for me personally I think there are two interpretations and it's very difficult to to figure out which one's correct one is Wow Chinese people do support their government they have high levels of trust in government the other interpretation is well this is unreliable because maybe they're just biasing their answers up because they're scared or they've been socialized into saying this sort of answer so we're gonna try to discuss this as the semester goes on but it's in terms of definitions and and one of the themes that I hope your coming coming out with is that it is sometimes difficult to define what's going on in China and there's a lot of confusion in terms of terms that are being used this is how I would define China I would say it's a non-democratic regime an authoritarian regime it is a one-party system so there is a political party in China some authoritarian regimes don't have parties at all some have multiple parties China is a one-party system led by the Chinese Communist Party there are technically Democratic parties in China today I say that with kind of sarcastic air quotations because these parties are actually under the control of the Chinese Communist Party so they are not opposition in any meaningful way so we describe China as a one-party system that said it is what one term that we're starting to use in political science to describe China is consultative so it's a one-party system but this isn't some tin-pot dictatorship controlling people just through repression there are a lot of elements of the Chinese political system that are consultative that allow people to voice their opinions about politics and for the government to respond so that's something to keep in mind we're going to talk about that in class in terms of the economic system is it socialist or not I actually think that maybe is an unhelpful binary it's a mixed ownership economy there's a large state-owned sector that seems to be declining but it's still quite important in terms of Chinese politics okay so let's get to kind of the big questions for the course so we have about twenty four lectures and I want to get through some some some of the bigger questions when we think about this system a good place to start is this idea of modernization theory which I think you probably touched on in some of your readings from from Rouen but this is one of the oldest theories in political science and so this is a political science science course so I am going to give you some some theory because I find that you know I can just give you facts about China for 24 lectures but in if you don't have a theoretical understanding of ways to think about these issues it just kind of you might as well just be reading Wikipedia so I'm gonna try to give you some theory and one of the oldest and most classic theories in political science is known as modernization theory and if the basic idea is as countries get richer they are more likely to democratize that's the core idea and the reasons why are as countries get richer that means individual citizens are getting richer they tend to move to cities they tend to become more educated they tend to have wealth and once they have reached that kind of baseline level of material consumption they tend to want more voice in government and they demand more of their governments and if they demand more of their governments they're going to demand democracy that's the story and this is one of the older theories estates back to 1959 and empirically when we look at democracies worldwide and kind of the distribution of different regimes we see a strong trend right so most wealthy countries except for a few oil-rich monarchies in the Middle East are democratic and most poor countries some are Democratic some are not but it seems to be their correlation there and so this fact this theory when people look at a graph like this and start thinking about China they start to reach conclusion so this is China's per capita GDP which is a measure of web wealth over time and 1978 is basically the beginning of the dung Xiao ping period the so called reform and opening-up the end of the Mao era we see that China is one of the poorest countries in the world and we see basically exponential growth that's that's incorrect so we see just sustained growth of 8 to 12 percent for about 30 years ok so within this period of time we've seen 400 depending on your definition of poverty we've seen 400 to 600 million people lifted out of poverty in the span of 30 years 8 to 10 percent for growth growth for that sustained period so people look at this chart and say well China's getting richer what does that mean well according to some people and I had you read a few of them there's a tendency for China watchers to make this sort of prediction this is a quote from a guy named Gordon Chang in a book called the coming collapse of China which he wrote in 2001 and he writes they will move mouths a tongues body soon it lies on hallowed ground it's in Tiananmen Square when the Communist Party of China Falls when the 3rd Chinese Revolution succeeds they'll move him from Tiananmen Square the People's Republic was proclaimed there and here inevitably its end will be announced the end of the modern Chinese state is near the People's Republic has 5 years 10 maybe before it falls okay so that's written in 2001 we know how things turned out Gordon Chang in 2011 right another prediction and he refers to the Communist Party as mandarins which is odd okay so everything was going well for the mandarins in Beijing Chiang writes now nothing is so yes my prediction was wrong instead of 2011 the mighty Communist Party of China will fall in 2012 and I think he might have written another one I can't believe people keep giving him this platform to write someone write the other story but he's not alone so there's kind of a cottage industry of Western China watchers that will predict the fall of the party at various moments in time but I've only been in the field maybe ten years now but there's a lot of I'm always shocked when another person said oh now they're gonna fall and so you read the row in peace and I have I forget which version I had to read but this is the original one from 1996 when he predicted China would become a democracy by 2015 and if you look closely at this language he's using the language of modernization theory there are important positive changes in China these are related to the steady and oppressive economic growth with it in turn fits the pattern of the way freedom has grown right so this is the same story country gets richer becomes more free and in terms of how the story is actually panned out this is a measure of democracy in China this is what's known as the polity index higher numbers are indicative of higher levels of democracy I don't really the number negative 7 isn't you know you should know what China is a negative 7 that the point here is really the temporal trend which is that China really hasn't had any meaningful changes in the level of political liberalisation in the last 30 years things were slightly worse in the height of the MAL period if you've know your history 1966 1968 that's the height of the Cultural Revolution but we haven't seen much in the way of political reform liberalisation for 30 years that's not to say there hasn't been changed and there have been different experimentations with governance but overall the story is that this is a thornton regime that has managed to stay authoritarian by a changing society and people describe this phenomenon as a thaw return resilience so there are three core questions that I want to answer with you over the next 12 weeks okay the first question is how has the Chinese how is China's political system changed so this I think this graph I like to show it but I actually think it's too simplistic there have been a lot of different shifts over time and important things but so how has it changed how has the CCP managed to stay in power facing this rapidly changing society what are the sources of its resilience and what are the prospects for future change so we're not going to be in the predictions business I will never ever ever say China will you know the Communist Party will succeed or fall or something like that that's a stupid thing to do but we shouldn't think about kind of what are the directions what are the trends that China's that might be governing China's future so that's the big those are the big ass for the course in terms of just how things are going to flow from here on out so there are really four parts to the course the first is that right five-five the first is we're actually going to take a step back next week and really just talk about authoritarianism in general so we're not going to talk much about China we're going to talk about authoritarian politics what does it mean for a regime to be not democratic and what are the challenges and tools what are the challenges authoritarian rulers face and what are the tools they use to face them once we get through that I am gonna give you a brief historical overview this isn't a history class but our goal is to understand contemporary Chinese politics if we don't understand any history whatsoever we're kind of just thinking in a vacuum so I'm gonna try to get through Chinese history very quickly highlighting the major political developments starting with the Mao era 1949 then moving on to dong Xiao ping what's known as a reform and opening-up period we'll do a lecture on the Tiananmen Square protests because that's a particularly pivotal moment in in China's political development and then we'll spend a couple weeks talking about the most recent three leaders Jung Simon who Jintao and Xi Jinping and Xi Jinping I will I will say that he is going to be a major character in in the stories because we're gonna try to get through history but then really focus on what's unfolding in the last year or two so it's been a very busy year for Chinese politics so we're gonna talk a lot about Xi Jinping so that's part two then part three we're going to begin to think about elite politics so one of the things we're gonna learn is that there are really two challenges facing an authoritarian ruler likes you jumpin Jung soo min dung shopping and so forth the first challenge is how do I keep my allies right so one of the main reasons why authoritarian regimes fall is because of a coup d'etat someone else within the regime seizes power in a violent way and so what does the Communist Party do what does the CCP do to avoid this issue and so we're going to talk about formal institutions within the Chinese government things like how laws are made how power is shared how laws are implemented we're going to talk about factions within the Chinese Communist Party we're going to talk about succession how power is transferred from one ruler to another we're going to talk about ideology so what is the ideology that binds the party together we're also going to do a lecture on the anti-corruption campaign so one of the hallmarks of Xi Jinping's rule has been a large-scale anti-corruption campaign so we're gonna talk about the implications of that the second threat facing any authoritarian regime so if threat one is the problem from within threat 2 is what we call the problem from below the threat of revolution the threat that the population will come together protests demand political change and overthrow the regime and so then the part four of the course is going to be discuss reform movements within China so what are the key Democratic movements that have occurred in Chinese society and then also how the Chinese government tries to contend with those so we'll spend a little bit of time talking about repression and the the kind of core tools of repression and by that I mean physical intimidation detentions torture these sorts of things we're going to talk about the dissident community I should say so I'm starting a new book project on Chinese political dissidents so this is a topic that's close to my research interests I'm going to try to get a member of the dissident community to come and do a guest lecture that day haven't confirmed that but I'm hoping we are joined by a special guest but we're going to talk about political dissidents and the threats that that they face and how they try to impact change we're going to talk about censorship and propaganda how the Chinese government manipulates the information environment with news and the blocking of news and information to try to manage the population and then we're going to talk about maybe we can call it the happier side of the softer side of the Chinese Communist Party which is the use of responsive or consultative institutions so if you're trying to control a population you can repress them you can manipulate them with censorship and propaganda or you can listen and you can respond and so it's important to give credit where credit's due often people who talk about the Communist Party in the West overlooked some of the more responsive and consultative aspects of this system so we're going to talk about things like village elections and the People's Congress system and other forms of input institutions we're then going to talk about sensitive groups particularly three populations that have proven difficult for the Chinese Communist Party to manage the first is women so there's a growing feminist movement in China the me2 movement has spread to China and it's presenting a quite a difficult difficulty for the regime which is a patriarchy so there are very few women at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party and for this reason the women's movement is very threatening we're gonna be joined by lady Hong Fincher who is the leading scholar and researcher of the feminist movement in China so she's going to come and give a guest lecture we're going to talk about we Gers so some of you have been may have read the news in fact in The New York Times this past Sunday there was a front-page article on effectively what our concentration camps of Uighur Muslims in western China and a province called shinjang this is in my opinion kind of the most pressing development in Chinese politics today at this moment and so we're going to spend a whole lecture just talking about shinjang and what are the dynamics there and thinking about ethnic politics so how does the regime manage manage ethnic groups and then the final the third population we're actually going to get lecture from Harry - a Harry raise your hand we're gonna talk about Christianity in China and religion and how the Chinese Communist Party thinks about religion Harry's dissertation is on religion he spent a lot of time hanging out in churches in China and attending Mass in China so he's got a lot of fun anecdotes and a good understanding so we're gonna have a guest lecture from Harry about Christianity and then finally we're gonna look at challenges ahead so given these different strategies what does the communist party look like moving forward what are the challenges they face we're in talk about things like the environment and the sustainability of the economy and so forth so that's the core content in terms of other basic logistical things so you need to get books I don't do a Pequod packet because aren't they like insanely expensive right they're like $500 it's just like a racket right it's just like corrupt really I don't know what's going on so I but I just remember I actually was a student here once upon a time I graduated class of oh seven so I remember the Pequod's packets were like a major unnecessary expense and so I don't do a few quad packet I do it all on ereserves every reading should be on ereserves if it's not for some reason try to find it on the Internet it is there so there should be nothing that you can't find if after you google and look at ereserves you cannot find it email me please maybe stop talking Thanks and so in terms of books there are three Kenneth Lieberthal there are two versions of this book please get the second edition it's got this cover there was some confusion about this but this version should be in labyrinth it has this cover the second is politics in China by William Joseph and then the third book is on censorship it's by Margaret Roberts who is a professor at UCSD and she's just a wonderful china scholar so we're gonna be reading those three books now do the good stuff in terms of greats there are four components to your grade in the course and the way I grade I try to be as simple and transparent as possible so I remember what it's like to be worried about grades of course you're worried about grades I was too so I'm not going to pretend like it's a big issue so my goal as your instructor is to just be fair and transparent and and that's how we'll approach it I would say in general I encourage people not to obsess so much about the grade and really obsess about what you're getting out of the course and I find that that makes for more productive learning environment but there's four things the first is preset participation and you will be getting reports from your preceptor at least once in the middle of the semester to kind of guide you about how your participation has been so we're going to give you actual feedback on how you're doing and precept as opposed to just going like this at the end of the semester which is what often happens the second assignment our response papers you will have to write three response papers over the course of semester I have not assigned them yet so do not worry about that yet okay let's say that is group don't say it is group but just don't worry about it because some of you're going to go home you're like oh one of the response papers do I haven't assigned them yet but basically there are going to be two-page responses to some current event there's something in the news whatever you want to write about something from the reading or lecture on and just a chance for you to be creative and you have to turn in three two-page papers over the course of the semester so it's very feasible but it's a way to get you to think about an issue that you care about and to show some creativity but it's not something to be terribly stressed about at this point in about two weeks time I will describe what I'm looking for in a response paper what makes a good response paper and I will give you more information but for now just know that that's one of the key assignments there will be a midterm exam in class on October 25th so please save that date show up that's really the only way you can get a D in this course is if you miss the midterm that's not true I take that back but that's a big one that's a big one okay and then the final exam is going to be a take-home open book the midterm is closed book closed book no computer nothing final exam is to take home in terms of grades again in the interest of transparency this is my grade distribution from the last three years so this is odd to show most people don't show this and I can see a combination of fear and hope depending defending like the computer science majors like all right people get a's so so you know I try to I try to keep it fair my distributions are you know roughly I give about 40% of people will get an A if you do well as a group you could get more A's in the class if you do poorly like it really depends I can kind of do I give similar exams every year so I can kind of gauge what the level comprehension is in the class but it is possible to do well in the course that's the key takeaway here I have yet to give a D but every year I am tempted so so don't it is real it is possible I've never given an F but but you know as some of you are pdf thing again we don't know that as instructors so you know we just grade you like we would anybody else but you know if your PDF is the basic way is to just come to class do the assignments and you will likely be fine how do you do well in the course this is a question that people always ask me it's not this isn't terribly difficult in terms of kind of mental horsepower it's really a course in my mind that really is just about effort so if you come to lecture and you pay attention if you go to precept and you contribute and I would say on precept we're going to give you point a discussion about how to contribute and precept often I remember when I was here it becomes like what are they caught like Gunners like everybody trying to like you know elbow out of the way and talk over each other sometimes participating well and precept is knowing when to listen and to make space for other people and so you can get really good precept participation without dominating you know we're not wanting to you all dominate we want you to just be engaged so come to class come to precept do the readings study work hard on your response papers and you should be fine the course is designed for people who might not know anything about Chinese politics it is it is meant to be kind of a blank slate course so you have no prior knowledge I know many of you probably speak Chinese or in the Chinese Department who hears in the Chinese department right certain yeah that's kind of fun so we will not speak Chinese in here in part because I don't want to create an unfair learning environment okay so if you want to engage with Chinese sources you can but I will not use Chinese in the classroom but yeah so it's it's it's really about effort and being engaged and we will try to be give you feedback so often what happens is the first response paper it's like that first paper and your freshman writing seminar where kind of as a train wreck it takes a while to learn how to write these things sometimes so we're going to give you feedback to try to get you to do your best work in terms of our teaching team look at that please stand up this is our preceptor team let's give him a round of applause Stan I don't know we gave him around A+ you haven't done anything yet but it's sort of a pre thank you for all your hard work so we have a great team of preceptors you'll notice forth in I couldn't find a photo so I represented Finn with a system of equations he's kind of a math math genius so we well I think that was appropriate but so you'll be assigned to precept precept is going not to start next week it's going to start the week after okay so no precept next week I like to kind of get the course rolling before we start doing precepts you all can sit down thank you and you will be allowed to sign up for precepts starting tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. and they do fill up there are a lot of you so you might have to wake up before 11:00 a.m. if you want to get a good preset that's my advice if you don't sign up you will be assigned to a preset that fits your schedule so you have until Monday morning at 9:00 a.m. to sign up after which we will slot you in we also reserve the right to adjust people you know you should sign up for your precept we do reserve the right to adjust people if there are precepts that are imbalanced you know too many people on one precept or something like this but that is rarely an issue okay and then find out things I would just say so just a little about me not that you care but so I was a student here actually so I was graduated class of 2007 and I studied Chinese here I did Princeton Beijing I did prints in Asia so I've kind of remember what it's like to go through some of his experiences that you are all going through one bit of personal news I did want to share is that I I'm a new father this is my little guy yeah I'm so proud I didn't do anything so this is my son so he's actually but this is a little bit of an older picture he's about 1 now why do I show this to you other than to get that kind of awe response it's really you know I will say being a new new dad life is a little crazy on the home front right now guys so sometimes things get a little hectic so in general in terms of email responsiveness my rule of thumb is I will reply to you within 24 hours okay that is my rule and I try to keep that I do ask for some forgiveness if I don't meet that standard and then I ask for you to go easy on me in terms of the emails there are 170 of you which is a lot this is the largest course I've ever taught and so if I get 170 emails I will I can't keep up and so general rules of thumb if you have a question look at the syllabus see if it's answered look at the announcements ask a friend ask another friend ask one more friend if after all those steps you still have a question about logistics or something like this please email me if you have a question about precept enrollment email Dan Berbatov dan is our head preceptor and his email I just posted on blackboard so you should be able to see that there but yeah so that's that's just something I would appreciate if you kind of try to manage that that process a little bit in terms of attendance I do not take attendance you're all adults like I'm not going to sit here and count who's here there's a hundred 70 of you that would take the whole lecture so if you have to miss a lecture or leave early that's completely fine it will affect your performance in the course in the sense that you're going to be missing out on some of the material and I will say I am filming the course I am debating it's mostly for my own personal records if you are under the age of 18 I need you to sign a waiver but that would be crazy because you're all sophomores so that would mean you started here at age 16 which would be unusual so if anybody here is 17 years old please come find me and we're gonna have to have you sign a waiver I am filming the course I will never use your likeness I will never if you have a comment in class I will never post that or anything like that so it's it's I will post some of the videos but I will edit out all student participation so you can say crazy things in class and they won't it won't show up on the area alright and then the final thing I would say this in terms of our overall goals for the course III this is a social science course and so I I do teach it that way and so it's really a combination what do I want you to come out of this with the core of it is China knowledge right so I want you to understand the facts the dates the the history I also I'm going to teach you research methods so who here is in the Woodrow Wilson School or the political science department econ okay so Social Sciences we're going to focus on social science research methods and I do this because you're all riding junior papers or senior theses and I remember doing this myself and I literally had no idea what research was and so I'm gonna force you to read political science journal articles they're a bit dry trust me this is my life but the goal is for you to learn these tools a little bit no knowledge of statistics is required but we're going to try to teach you a little bit about how to think about research questions we're going to teach you some social science theories and frameworks to think about some of these issues and then the goal if we have those three things is for you to be able to evaluate current events and so if a new event occurs in China or some clown says the Communist Party is going to fall in three days you can you can adjudicate that argument all right so I will leave it here I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday thank

Channel: Rory Truex

Views: 12,512

Rating: 4.8051949 out of 5

Keywords: China, Chinese Politics, Chinese Communist Party, Authoritarian

Id: hOcXk_35-rI

Length: 45min 13sec (2713 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2020