Harvard Club of Washington, DC

Asia for the Asians: Dinner and Discussion with Prof. Paula Harrell

There are dangerous games going on in Asia, posits Prof. Paula Harrell in her new book offering a contrarian view of China's series of expansionary moves in the Pacific. Enjoy lively discussion with an open bar and full, Asian-themed dinner @$35.

$35 members and their guests

$60 non-members

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Chopped greens tossed with ginger-soy vinaigrette, Mandarin oranges, bell peppers, scallions, sesame seeds, pickled ginger and fried wontons
Cashew chicken with snow peas and peppers
Seared salmon with an Asian glaze
Vegetable lo mein (vegetarian entree)
Bok choy sautéed in sesame oil
Jasmine rice
Mini chocolate lava cakes

There are dangerous games going on in Asia these days. With a succession of expansionary moves in the East and South China seas China has signaled its long-term intention to dominate the Pacific, edging out Japan and the West who in rivalry or partnership have held sway over the region for the last century and a half. As China jacks up its defense budget, the Chinese media obliges by emphasizing the threat of Japanese militarism, not only at present and during the terrible wartime years, but as a consistent theme from the moment modern China-Japan ties were established in the mid-nineteenth century. Is this an accurate reading? Was the relationship ever and always as confrontational as the Chinese press would have us now believe?

Evidence from Asia for the Asians suggests that, to the contrary, at the turn of the last century the relationship was on a positive track. At that time many influential Japanese, products of Japan’s remarkable “reform and opening to the outside world,” were willing to put their talents to use to assist China’s modernizing drive. Teachers, advisers, public security experts, these people worked in China at Chinese invitation, most of them on the Chinese payroll. However fragile cooperative arrangements proved to be in the end, the rationale for them was solid, and Japan’s contributions, particularly in building schools and a modern legal system, had lasting impact. There are lessons for today in the issues raised then: the effectiveness of soft power, the link between technology transfer and innovation, prospects for Pacific community, constitutional versus authoritarian governance, and the applicability of Western-inspired international law to non-Western settings. Asia for the Asians makes it clear that the re-shaping of Asia going on at present is part of an unfinished enterprise with China, Japan, and the West still the central players facing the same fateful choice: cooperation or conflict.

Paula S. Harrell (Ph.D., Columbia University) is a China-Japan historian specializing in 19^th-20^th century history and contemporary economic development. In addition to research and university teaching (modern China and modern Japan), she worked for a decade as a management specialist in the World Bank’s China Department on projects in education and agriculture. In 2008 Harrell joined the adjunct faculty at Georgetown University where she offers courses on 21^st century China in historical perspective, including, currently, a new course called, “China and the Internet: Challenging America in Cyberspace.” Her most recent publication is Asia for the Asians: China in the Lives of Five Meiji Japanese (MerwinAsia/Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, 2012), a companion volume to her earlier study, Sowing the Seeds of Change: Chinese Students, Japanese Teachers, 1895-1905 (Stanford University Press, 1992).