Title
Chinese Communist Party Nationalism: What’s New, What’s Nationalist & What’s Communist About It?
Abstract
The Center for East Asian Studies kicked off its fall semester lecture series with a talk on September 25 by historian John Fitzgerald, a senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Professor Fitzgerald discussed the concept of nationalism in China from the era of the Taiping Rebellion to today. “With China’s rise, make way for the rise of the party as a global player,” he said to the audience at the Law School’s Lubar Commons. “It’s here to stay and expects acceptance.”
This talk was co-sponsored with the East Asian Legal Studies Center, the La Follette School of Public Affairs, and the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership.
This was a return visit to Madison for Professor Fitzgerald, who was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow here in the 1980s.
Biography
John Fitzgerald is Emeritus Professor at Swinburne University in Melbourne and non-resident Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra. He served as China Representative of The Ford Foundation in Beijing from 2008-2013 and as elected President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities from 2015-2017. He has also served on the advisory board of the Australian government’s Australia-China Council and its National Foundation for Australia-China Relations. His recent books include Cadre Country: How China became the Chinese Communist Party (2022) and (ed) Taking the Low Road: China’s Influence in Australian States and Territories (2022). He has a Ph.D. from the Australian National University and held a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.