Duration
30h Th
Number of credits
Lecturer
Language(s) of instruction
English language
Organisation and examination
Teaching in the first semester, review in January
Schedule
Units courses prerequisite and corequisite
Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program
Learning unit contents
Schedule: Wednesdays from 11.00 to 13.00. classroom: Séminaire 11, B 31 [Liège Sart-Tilman - Agora]
This course is being taught in ENGLISH. (NB: this academic year, the following China-related course (ASIE0029- "Power and Society in Modern and Contemporary China" is also taught in English, see https://www.programmes.uliege.be/cocoon/20252026/en/cours/ASIE0029-1.html )
First session: 1 October 2025.
Infos : Eric.Florence@ulg.ac.be
General outline (See Ecampus for the detailed agenda for this course as well as the assigned readings which will be made available through this platform as well as at the University Press)
This course is divided into two types of sessions (see section "Teaching activities" below):
1. Presentations by the teacher and possibly by guest professors on the following introductory themes (+ discussions):
- transition between Maoist and post-Maoist periods;
- state and Party institutions;
- government by law;
- migration, work and political economy in the reform era;
- the ethnic question in China;
- social organizations and social control;
- Hong Kong: a hybrid political regime
2. Group discussions based on assigned readings.
Non-exhaustive list of themes provided to students. This year, priority will be put on the 6 following topics:
- The Chinese transnational state and Global China (Belt and Road Initiative; the Chinese transnational state and its diaspora);
- The nature of the Chinese political regime ;
- Hong Kong: from one country two systems to the National Security Law: domestic and international dimensions ;
- The labour regimes in XXIst Century China;
- Collective movements in the Xi Jinping era (LGTBQ+; labor relations; the challenging of the aspirational model tinked to high growth; etc.);
- Social mobility in XXst Century China.
Other topics can include (non exhaustive list):
- Intellectuals and the State;
- Freedom of expression and control of the Internet;
- The emergence of a civil society;
- The religious question in China;
- Redeployment of power beyond national borders;
The perspective followed is resolutely diachronic and dynamic. We will study how institutions inherited from the Maoist period (1949-1978) evolved to play a new role in a context of introduction of capitalism and market relations in China. The institutions of post-Maoist China have influenced and some of them still influence people's daily lives. However, we too often ignore the different ways in which these institutions are transformed by the individuals themselves.
.
Learning outcomes of the learning unit
At the end of the course, the student will be able to:
- Develop her/his capacity to understand and situate the major issues of the socio-political processes at work in post-Maoist China, in particular with regard to the dynamics of relations between the state-party and contemporary Chinese society.
- Strengthen their ability to identify the key resources of the scientific literature in relation to the specific themes addressed in the course (civil society; modalities of social control; forms of redeployment of state power; influence of the Chinese Party-state abroad; etc.) and to synthesize its central elements.
- Develop her/his capacity for reflection and analysis in relation to the central concepts mobilized within the scientific literature studied - resistance / domination; hegemony; civil society and social mobilizations; capitalism; authoritarianism; democracy; etc.
This course combines face-to-face sessions with individual and collective work (in small groups of 2 to 4 students via the online system ECampus).
As far as online work is concerned, it will have a dual objective:
- Develop collaborative work between students;
- Strengthen the active participation of students as well as a better appropriation of teaching content, particularly through preparation before face-to-face sessions.
Prerequisite knowledge and skills
Knowledge of the English language. This course is being taught in English (sessions and discussions, presentations by students and assigned readings).
Planned learning activities and teaching methods
In order to achieve these objectives, the following learning activities will be implemented:
- Face-to-face presentations by the professor and by guest professors around general themes aimed at introducing the socio-political context of post-Maoist China. These sessions are preceded by assigned readings by the students (6 sessions of 2 hours). The students will have the opportunity to answer questions, as well as to formulate questions themselves related to the readings offered before and during these face-to-face sessions. These sessions will be devoted to a series of themes mentioned above under the heading "Contents of the learning unit".
- Preparation / writing in groups of 2 to 4 students of summary work (focused literature review) around a theme chosen jointly from a list of themes proposed by the professor (see below below "Contents of the teaching unit"). Exchanges between the students and the teacher will take place both online and face-to-face in order to refine the writing of these literature reviews by students which will then be shared on the ECampus platform. The teacher will provide advices on how to write this review (sources; structure of the paper; identification of paradigms and debates around the chosen theme; etc.). The first class session will be devoted in particular to the constitution of student groups and the allocation of themes to each of these groups;
Mode of delivery (face to face, distance learning, hybrid learning)
Face-to-face teaching and online activities (via ECampus platforlm).
Course materials and recommended or required readings
Platform(s) used for course materials:
- eCampus
Further information:
In addition to a portfolio of readings which will be available both on Ecampus and at the University of Liège Press, use will be made of a wide range of ethnographic materials (posters, slogans, official documents, press and scientific articles, popular literature , video documents, photographs, etc.). Access to these ethnographic documents complements the readings carried out by students and aims to allow students to give the learning content a materiality and a more lively dimension.
Indicative references:
Creemers, R., & Trevaskes, S. (Eds.). (2020). Law and the party in China : ideology and organisation. Cambridge University Press.
Dickson, B. J. (2021). The party and the people : Chinese politics in the 21st century. Princeton University Press.
Doyon, and C. Froissart. (2024). 'Introduction', The Chinese Communist Party, A 100-year Trajectory, ANU Press, pp. 1-16. Available online at https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-04428176
Doyon. (2020). 'The Strength of a Weak Organization: The Communist Youth League as a Path to Power in Post-Mao China', The China Quarterly, 243: 1-21. The paper is available here https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:54dddc90-6618-4f95-a43c-4d2947484761/files/mb49d4c8ec523211025149161ef3530ce
Martin, F. (2022). Dreams of flight : the lives of Chinese women students in the West. Duke University Press.
Florence, E. (2023). "Struggling over public spaces and scales of visibility: workers' grassroots organisations in twenty-first century China." Mouvement Social, 285 (December 2023): 167-185.
Fu Hualing, 'Duality and struggles for legal autonomy in China', China Perspectives (Law and justice in China: tensions, mutations and debates), 2019/1, p. 3-10.
Ho, M. (2025). From mobilization to aftercare: Movement trauma and care work for exiled Hongkongers. Journal of Civil Society, 21(3), 279-298. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2025.2500358
Lei, Y.-W. (2023). The gilded cage : technology, development, and state capitalism in China. Princeton University Press.
Margaret Pearson, Meg Rithmire, Kellee S. Tsai. (2021). 'Party-State Capitalism in China', Margaret, Pearson, Meg Rithmire, Kellee S. Tsai. Current History, 120 (827): 207-213. https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2021.120.827.207Saich, T. (2021). From rebel to ruler : one hundred years of the Chinese Communist Party. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Heilmann, S. and E. J. Perry. (2011). Mao's invisible hand : the political foundations of adaptive governance in China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, C. K. (2025). Forever Hong Kong : A Global City's Decolonization Struggle. (1st ed.). Harvard University Press.
Lee, F. L. F. (2025). Pro-Democracy contention in Hong Kong : relational dynamics between the Umbrella Movement and the anti-extradition protests. State University of New York Press.
Martin, F. (2022). Dreams of flight : the lives of Chinese women students in the West. Duke University Press.
O'Brien, K. 'Rightful Resistance Revisited', Journal of Peasant Studies. (2016). The paper is available here https://escholarship.org/content/qt9s2281gj/qt9s2281gj.pdf
Pia, A. E. (2024). Cutting the mass line : water, politics, and climate in Southwest China (First edition.). Johns Hopkins University Press.
Spires, A. (2024). Everyday Democracy in China, Columbia University Press.
Stern R. and K. O'Brien, 'Politics at the boundary: mixed signals and the Chinese state', Modern China, Vol. 38 (2), pp. 174-198, the paper is available here file:///C:/Users/E.Florence/Downloads/eScholarship%20UC%20item%204hv18561%20(1).pdf
Teets, J. (2014). Civil Society Under Authoritarianism: The China Model, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Veg, S. (2019). Minjian : the rise of China's grassroots intellectuals. Columbia University Press.
Zhu, Han and Lu, Jun (2021). 'The Crackdown on Rights-Advocacy NGOs in Xi's China: Politicizing the Law and Legalizing the Repression'. [S.l.]: SSRN. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3887239
Written work / report
Continuous assessment
Further information:
Exam(s) in session
Any session
- In-person
Written exam
Written work / report
Additional information:
The assessment consists in:
1. Participation to the class sessions and online assignments: 10 % of the mark. This course is built on the basis of learning activities which rest on the active participation of students, this explains why participation to the sessions is taken into account within the global assessment of the course. Moreover, the active participation of students to the sessions and learning activities prepare students to the following two dimensions of the assessment (see hereunder items 2 and 3) ;
2. A written evaluation based on the first six weeks of class (students will be allowed to use the papers, book chapters and summaries of these documents during this assessment): 40% of the global grade;
3. Written delivery of a focused "state of the art" paper in groups of 2 to 5 persons. This paper can be delivered in French or English and isworth 50% of the overal grade.
Work content - critical commentary on generative AI
Your work must also include a critical commentary on a literature review produced by generative artificial intelligence (ChatGPT or other). This commentary will indicate the prompt used and present a comparison of your own work (produced with your human intelligence and without any recourse to artificial intelligence) with the result provided by artificial intelligence. This commentary will therefore identify certain strengths and/or weaknesses in your own work and certain strengths and/or weaknesses in the result provided by the AI.
The number of articles required varies depending on the size of the group:
* If you are working alone, a minimum of 4 articles is required.
* If you are working in pairs, a minimum of 8 articles is required.
* If you are working in a group of more than three persons, a minimum of 12 articles is required.
Choice of articles
The articles used must be scientific articles, comprising approximately 8,000 to 10,000 words.
Work placement(s)
Organisational remarks and main changes to the course
None
Contacts
Eric Florence Eric.Florence@ulg.ac.be