ICS Lecture: Yan Long, "Failed Foreign Interventions? The Transnational Making and Unmaking of AIDS Politics in China"

Image reminiscent of the Chinese flag with text that reads: Did the "Color Revolution" bring down China?
February 5, 2021
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Online (Registration Required)

Date Range
2021-02-05 16:00:00 2021-02-05 17:30:00 ICS Lecture: Yan Long, "Failed Foreign Interventions? The Transnational Making and Unmaking of AIDS Politics in China" The Institute for Chinese Studies presents: "Failed Foreign Interventions? The Transnational Making and Unmaking of AIDS Politics in China" Yan Long University of California, Berkeley with discussant Thomas McDow, The Ohio State University Flyer: Forthcoming Abstract:  Do foreign interventions matter in changing China’s authority structure? Many scholarly models cast external interventions as “cures” for all that ails struggling local communities and activists in repressive environments by providing political opportunities or resources. Others argue that interventions are doomed to fail given that strong authoritarian states are not susceptible to foreign power. Instead of taking either a celebratory or cynical perspective, this talk highlights the multifaceted and often contradictory aspects of interventions. I argue that transnational programs may expand political participation while producing and exacerbating participatory inequality, which could ironically strengthen the authoritarian apparatus of governance. This argument is developed based on a longitudinal ethnographic study on the evolution of Chinese HIV/AIDS politics between 1989 and 2018. I demonstrate how, after investing one billion US dollars, foreign organizations that aimed at promoting community engagement ended up de-radicalizing AIDS activism and manufacturing a civil society represented by HIV negative urban gay men organizations who unwittingly served the Chinese government in the arena of infectious disease control. Online (Registration Required) America/New_York public

The Institute for Chinese Studies presents:

"Failed Foreign Interventions? The Transnational Making and Unmaking of AIDS Politics in China"

Yan Long
University of California, Berkeley

with discussant Thomas McDow, The Ohio State University

Flyer: Forthcoming

Abstract: 

Do foreign interventions matter in changing China’s authority structure? Many scholarly models cast external interventions as “cures” for all that ails struggling local communities and activists in repressive environments by providing political opportunities or resources. Others argue that interventions are doomed to fail given that strong authoritarian states are not susceptible to foreign power. Instead of taking either a celebratory or cynical perspective, this talk highlights the multifaceted and often contradictory aspects of interventions. I argue that transnational programs may expand political participation while producing and exacerbating participatory inequality, which could ironically strengthen the authoritarian apparatus of governance. This argument is developed based on a longitudinal ethnographic study on the evolution of Chinese HIV/AIDS politics between 1989 and 2018. I demonstrate how, after investing one billion US dollars, foreign organizations that aimed at promoting community engagement ended up de-radicalizing AIDS activism and manufacturing a civil society represented by HIV negative urban gay men organizations who unwittingly served the Chinese government in the arena of infectious disease control.