3.0

Average Course Rating

This course invites students to critically examine China’s growing engagement and influence on a global scale. Over the past two decades, China’s outbound investments, loans, infrastructure projects, migration, medical, and cultural initiatives have surged dramatically. These sweeping yet variegated footprints have profoundly shaped the international political and economic landscapes. What are the peculiarities of China’s overseas practices, processes, patterns, and policies in a globalized world? This course will guide any undergraduate at Hopkins with an interest in contemporary China to analyze the multifaceted dimensions of “Global China” using ethnographic methods and other social science approaches. The course is designed to attract students from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, international studies, East Asian studies and Africana studies. The course is structured into three units. In the first unit, students will be introduced to the general phenomena, multi-level dynamics, and reflective methodological frameworks of Global China, laying the groundwork for the remainder of the course. In the second unit, students will explore how Global China manifests across various domains, including industry, agriculture, infrastructure, resources, and medicine. In the third unit, students will reflect on the interactions between overseas Chinese entrepreneurs and local populations, Chinese political-economic power and soft power, as well as the relationships among different overseas Chinese communities.