2024 was a notable year for the Center.  SCPKU fully relaunched after COVID with new resources and plans to educate future leaders about China and provide a user-friendly home away from home for all Stanford faculty and students.

Most importantly, Stanford students and faculty returned to SCPKU.

In March, we welcomed Stanford undergraduate students back to Beijing for the China Studies in Beijing program (titled 汉学京塾 in Chinese), a collaborative study abroad program co-sponsored by Stanford's Bing Overseas Study Program (BOSP) and the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI). Twenty Stanford undergraduates participated in an intensive 10-week curriculum, which focused on China's role in world politics and the global economy.  In each course, a number of exceptional Peking University students joined as full-fledged participants to give our students a fully cross-cultural experience and an opportunity to get to know their Chinese counterparts.

Based on all accounts, China Studies in Beijing 2024 was a huge success.  We were one of the few US institutions, and the only one among our peer institutions, to bring back US college students to mainland China for a full term of study after COVID. A number of major news outlets reported on our program, which featured interviews with our students:

National Public Radio (NPR)

The Economist

Christian Science Monitor

This program is all the more important during this tense phase of US-China relations, and thus, we are delighted to announce that it will be held again in the coming Spring quarter of the 2025 academic year.  With input from our past students, the program will add an increased emphasis on language education and immersion.

We also officially relaunched our three-week summer seminars, which provide a short but deep dive into a specialized subject, featuring field trips within China and guest lectures from local experts. Chinese students also join these seminars to promote extended intellectual exchange.

This August, seventeen Stanford students participated in the three-week Summer Seminar program.  Professor Andrew Walder (Stanford Sociology) led a seminar with a colleague from Tsinghua University on the structure and global impact of Chinese corporations, and Professor Karen Eggleston (Director of the FSI APARC Asia Health Policy Program) led a seminar on emerging technologies in China's healthcare sector.

On the faculty front, we were delighted to have Professor Yang Sun, from the Medical School, join SCPKU for a month-long fellowship as he researched advanced imaging techniques to study mitochondrial functions. 

The center also hosted two predoctoral student fellows: Preetam Prakash from the History Department, who conducted research on the Qing-era justice system in China, and Ting Zheng from the East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC) Department, who examined the symbolic significance of eyes in twentieth-century Chinese literature.

SCPKU was also the site for several prominent events and programs this year, including the China Art Institute’s painting series, the Yenching Academy’s “China in the World Economy” series, and Peking University Innovation Club meetings and activities.

This year also marked the beginning of a substantial developmental push as we encourage the greater Stanford community to visit and use SCPKU. We made a good start in May, when we organized a “Back on the Farm 2.0” on May 18th to announce loud and clear to our Stanford alumni and friends that SCPKU is more than alive and well. It was a much-welcomed event, and Stanford alumni and friends had a chance to reconnect and attend Stanford faculty-led speed classes. 

We had a full house: over 120 alumni and friends showed up on a Saturday morning, some flying in from HK, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Chengdu.   Everyone was clearly hungry for such intellectual stimulation.  They want more.  7 Stanford faculty zoomed in late on a Friday night, California time, to teach 30-minute “speed classes,” while two faculty at SCPKU led in-person classes. (View the full event speaker schedule here.) Jon Levin, our 13th president of Stanford, was traveling that evening and couldn’t participate live, but warmly greeted guests with a recorded welcome address.

One of the most welcomed and important developments in 2024 was the establishment of an SCPKU Advisory Council.  This is a group of accomplished professionals from various backgrounds, including academia, business, and the non-profit sectors, who value the importance of SCPKU and its mission. Its establishment is another sign of Stanford’s support of SCPKU and the importance of our mission. The Council has already provided wonderful suggestions and opportunities to raise awareness of SCPKU and solicit support to implement our vision, and we owe them a huge thank you for their generosity and input.  We look forward to their continued guidance in advancing our mission. 

We have bold new ideas, and we now must find new ways to fund our vision. For those interested in supporting our ongoing efforts, please feel free to reach out to Benjamin Rubin, Associate Director of Development at FSI: brubin@stanford.edu.

Thank you for your continuing interest in our work and mission. Happy holidays from the team at SCPKU, and we look forward to another exciting year ahead in 2025.

Sincerely,
Jean C. Oi
Lee Shau Kee Director, Stanford Center at Peking University
William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics, Department of Political Science  
Senior Fellow and China Program Director, Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies