Haocheng Lai

This course is available on the MSc in Anthropology and Development, MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and Fudan), MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and USC), MSc in Political Economy of Europe in the World (LSE and Fudan), MSc in Social Anthropology and MSc in Social Anthropology (Religion in the Contemporary World). This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

Priority is given to home department students, followed by those from other departments (based on their statements, and space permitting). Deadline for application: Please apply as soon as possible after the opening of course selection. For queries contact: Anthro.Admin@lse.ac.uk

This course is available to students on other relevant programmes (subject to approval).

Mutually exclusive courses:

This course cannot be taken with AN447 at any time on the same degree programme.

Assumed prior knowledge:

Students should have prior knowledge in relevant social science disciplines and China.

This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to global China, examining how China engages with the world economically, politically, culturally, and socially. Students will develop critical frameworks for analysing the social, cultural, economic, and political dimensions of China in the World, and the course will introduce key theoretical frameworks developed in Chinese studies, anthropology, political science, and geography, including debates about Chinese exceptionalism and alternative modernities. Core themes of the course include the social links between Chinese and non-Chinese actors (for instance in migration, diaspora, and education), evolving cultural understandings (soft power, media, cosmologies), and political economy (Chinese capitalism, FDI and development aid, legal regimes).

10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

Essay (1500 words).

Students will have the opportunity to submit one formative essay of up to 1500 words during the course.

Students will be informed of their formative submission deadline by email by the end of Week 4 of term.

• Franceschini, Ivan, and Nicholas Loubere. 2022. Global China as Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Duara, Prasenjit 2009. The Global and the Regional in China’s Nation-formation. London: Routledge
• Osterhammel, Jürgen. 2014. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Lovell, Julia 2019. Maoism: A Global History. London: Bodley Head.
• Lee, Ching Kwan. 2018. The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Lee, Ching Kwan. 2022. ‘Global China at 20: Why, How and So What?’ The China Quarterly 250:313–31. doi:10.1017/S0305741022000686.
• Chen, Kuan-Hsing. Asia as Method. Toward Deimperialization. Durham: Duke University Place, 2010.

Exam (100%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period.