Abstract
In this sparkling and candid conversation, Elizabeth Perry reminisces about her early years in Japan, her first trip back to China in the late 1970s, her reconsideration of the Chinese revolution, and interdisciplinary studies and her career as both a political scientist and historian. Perry shares her insights into the cultural resources of the Chinese Communist Party, the resilience of the Chinese regime, comparisons of the Chinese and Russian revolutions, human connections between the city and the countryside, global issues facing higher education, and her leadership and vision as the director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute.
Notes
1 Andrew J. Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience,” in Journal of Democracy, 14, no. 1 (January 2003): 6–17.
2 See Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds., Mao's Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011).
3 Eric R. Wolf (1923–99) was a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at H. Lehman College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York.
4 Hukou is the household registration system officially promulgated by the PRC government in 1958, with the primary goal to control the movement of people between urban and rural areas.