1.TOPIC

China’s Rejuvenation and the Marine Science and Technology

2.ABSTRACT

China is the only of the four ancient civilizations that has continued to this day. She has never been really overcome even if she was conquered by invading ethnic groups again and again. But these conquerors eventually were conquered by Chinese culture gradually and peacefully. Chinese civilization seems to have dominant cultural genes that can merge any conquerors. However, with the coming Age of Exploration in the 15 century, when the Western surpassed China in the ocean knowledge and sea navigation technologies and dominate the oceans, Chinese culture met its first serious challenge. The defeat in the Opium War of 1840 made Chinese elite for the first time in history sense that Chinese culture is humiliated by a foreign culture with better science and technologies. They came from the ocean therefore Chinese call them yangren, literally meaning Ocean men. Chinese once had much better technologies in navigation science, technology and equipment, but they neglected their further development and gave up the endeavor at sear and eventually swallow the bitter fruits.

Chinese Dream is the dream of rejuvenation of China. That is to reestablish China's national position among nations of the world before 1840. China was conquered from the sea. So the rejuvenation of China must also be accompanied with the rejuvenation of its sea power, because ever since the Age of Exploration, the sea is a key for any power to be a power. This lecture will discuss why in details.

3.TIME

October 26th, 9:30

4.LOCATION

Room A407, Ocean Science and Technology Building, Laoshan Campus

5.SPEAKER

DENG Hongfeng

6.SPEAKER’s INTRODUCTION

Deng Hongfeng, born in September, 1953, Professor of General Education at Ocean University of China. Since 1982, he was lecturer, associate professor of history at Shandong University, professor of English at Ocean University of China and Fulbright scholar at the Department of History of Harvard University, visiting scholar at the Department of Philosophy of Queen’s University of Canada, and visiting scholar at Texas A&M University, College Station USA. 

His major publications include: Indentured Servitude in British North America, The Mass Media in the French Revolution, Historiography and Science, The Rise of Popular Culture and the Western Literature in the 20th Century, The Dilemma of Translation or Culture, Semiotic Explanations of Translation, Empty Verb in Chinese Syntactic Structure, A History of the Western Civilization, etc.