Individual Course
The Return of China
Course Length
6
5–6 hours per week
Featuring faculty from:
Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences
Enroll as Individual
Certificate Price:
$ 149
On demand
Enroll on edXEnroll as Individual
Certificate Price:
$ 149
On demand
Enroll on edXDiscover China’s return to power through political, social, and economic growth in relation to other countries.
What will China become? In order to understand China’s changing identity and its future trajectory, one needs to first understand its past. In The Return of China, we will investigate six themes, including various models of ruling; elites, dynasties, and their impact on present-day China; unity and diversity; family and national identity; the United States in relation to China; and China and the rest of the world.
Through interactive lectures, in-depth reading, and interpretation of texts, you will acquire a critical historical lens to understand China’s political and governmental systems, cultural and societal trends, and business innovations and trade lines. From the rise of Confucianism to “the Great Restoration of the Chinese Nation,” from the One-Child Policy to the Belt-and-Road Initiative, you will explore profound continuities and radical transformations in China’s political, economic, and social landscape.
Get ready for the return of China's global prominence.
Self-Guided
edX
Industries:
- Trading/Import/Export
- Government
- Advertising/Marketing/Public Relations
- Manufacturing
- Learning Outcome
Explore the current landscape and major initiatives that can lead to China’s improved positioning.
- Learning Outcome
See China’s connection to the rest of the world, through political, economic, and social systems.
- Learning Outcome
Dispel common biases of China as a leader, seeking to understand differences and likenesses between other nations.
Faculty
Your Instructor
Yi Lu
Assistant Professor of History, Dartmouth College
Yi Lu is a historian of modern China. His teaching and research interests focus on the history of information, material culture, and digital humanities. His work explores how information technologies — from paper archives to AI tools — change what knowledge is, how it is made and used, and to whom it belongs. More specifically, he focuses on China’s 20th century, during which propaganda, censorship, and secrecy served as key instruments of bureaucratic governance and social control.
Your Instructor
William C. Kirby
T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University
William C. Kirby is a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor. He serves as Chairman of the Harvard China Fund, the University's academic venture fund for China, and Faculty Chair of the Harvard Center Shanghai, Harvard's first university-wide center located outside the United States. A historian of modern China, Kirby's work examines contemporary China’s business, economic, and political development in an international context. He writes and teaches on the growth of modern companies in China (Chinese and foreign; state-owned and private); Chinese corporate law and company structure; business relations across Greater China (PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong); and China’s relations with the United States and Europe.
Your Instructor
Peter K. Bol
Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Peter K. Bol’s research is centered on the history of China’s cultural elites at the national and local levels from the 7th to the 17th century. He led Harvard’s university-wide effort to establish support for geospatial analysis in teaching and research; in 2005 he was named the first director of the Center for Geographic Analysis. As Vice Provost (2013/09–2018/10) he was responsible for HarvardX, the Harvard Initiative in Learning and Teaching, and research that connects online and residential learning. He also directs the China Historical Geographic Information Systems project, a collaboration between Harvard and Fudan University in Shanghai to create a GIS for 2000 years of Chinese history. In a collaboration between Harvard, Academia Sinica, and Peking University, he directs the China Biographical Database project, an online relational database currently of 420,000 historical figures that is being expanded to include all biographical data in China’s historical record over the last 2000 years.