China and India: The End of Development Models?

The Wellington Conference on Contemporary China

2010

China and India: The End of Development Models?

An International Conference to be held at

Victoria University of Wellington
Wellington, New Zealand
April 12-13, 2010

Sponsored and organised by
The New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre
in association with
The Asian Studies Institute

Over the last thirty years, the impressive growth performance of China and India has caused a new wave of global anxiety about the rise of power and wealth outside the developed world. More pointedly, scholarly interests and debates have focused on how the rising of China and India would change the international political and economic structure, and whether India or China would outperform the other in the long run. What is missing amidst the anxieties and fanfare about the two new “giants” is a genuine scholarly interest in an understanding of how the impressive growth and social transformation has been achieved in these two unique countries. With “Japan as No 1” in the 1950s and 1960s, the “four little dragons” in the 1960s and 1970s, the extension of the “East Asian miracle” to the rest of the Pacific Asia in the 1980s and 1990s, and now China and India, scholars must have enough empirical evidence to revisit some of the long-troubling issues in post-War development research and debate: Is the developmental state essential for economic growth? Is export concentration inevitable? Are corporate groupings necessary? Does law matter? How do cultural and social relations contribute to economic and social development?

Moreover, China and India are two major world civilizations that have taken very different paths in modern development. Modern state building started in each of these countries under a set of very different conditions. China and India have been problematic cases in modern development. With the two countries reaching a new historical phase of their modern development, it would be useful to revisit the scholarly debate on modern development again and hopefully to lift it to a new level: how do colonial experiences, nationalism, communism and socialism affect a nation’s modern development? How do traditional social structure, values and relations transform or persist in modern development and how do these shape the emergent modern state? Are there different types of modernity or different models of modern developments?

The conference is designed to bring leading scholars in the field to address these issues. We are very pleased to have Professor Wing Thye Woo of UC Davis; Professor Pranab Bardhan, UC Berkeley; Professor Zhenglai Deng of Fudan University; Professor Prasenjit Duara of National University of Singapore; Professor B. Sudhakara Reddy of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research; Professor Fu Jun of Peking University; Professor Sun Shihai of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Dr John Alexander Michael of University of Madras; Professor Sheng Kaiyan of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences; Professor Guo Sujian of Fudan University; Professor Dilip K. Das, of Conestoga College; Professor Heng Quan of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences;

We are inviting paper proposals on any aspects of the conference theme and welcome participation of scholars in related disciplines. We will publish selected papers as an edited volume by an international publisher. Those interested in giving a paper at the conference should forward their paper proposals (title and a 150-word abstract, with full contact details) to Professor Xiaoming Huang (xiaoming.huang@vuw.ac.nz) and Professor Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (Sekhar.Bandyopadhyay@vuw.ac.nz), co-chairs of the conference organizing committee, no later than 30 January 2010. Registration details for the conference and acceptance letters will be sent shortly after that. For those who require a formal letter for travel and visa purposes, please send your proposal early and indicate accordingly. We look forward to your participation.