The Official Master’s Degree in Global East Asian Studies of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and Casa Asia, in collaboration with the GREGAL Research Group (UAB), present this afternoon at 6pm a webinar on China and the geopolitics of the 21st century. You must register to attend the event at this link.
Traditionally, the discipline of International Relations has studied the foreign policy of modern China from theoretical frameworks that conceive of the Chinese state as a unitary state. Consequently, such interpretations tend to overestimate the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to lead and cohere China’s foreign policy. However, such approaches that emphasise the unitary nature of the Chinese state suffer from certain limitations. For example, they fail to understand how the political and economic fragmentation within the Chinese state shapes its foreign policy. In contrast to such interpretations, this conference will highlight the methodological need to open up the “black box” of the Chinese state and how its “fractured” nature conditions Chinese foreign policy in the 21st century.
Rafael Bueno, Director of Politics, Society and Educational Programmes at Casa Asia will welcome the audience; Dr. Blai Guarné and Dr. David Saurí, Master’s Degree in Global East Asian Studies (UAB) will introduce the session, and Inés Arco Escriche, Researcher at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs) will moderate the debate. The lecture will be given by Dr. Ferran Pérez-Mena, lecturer at Durham University (UK) where he teaches Chinese Politics and International Relations in East Asia. With a PhD in International Relations from the University of Sussex (UK), he is an expert in East Asian international relations, Chinese and Taiwanese politics, Chinese international thought, social movements in East Asia, international historical sociology and non-Western international relations theory.
