Prasenjit Duara, Raffles Professor of Humanities, National University of Singapore.

"Chinese Reforms in Historical and Comparative Perspective"

This talk will look at the last 30 years of reform in China in both a global, comparative perspective and a Chinese historical one, paying particular attention to the long-term role of the cultural nexus of power in creating an entrepreneurial local culture as well as long-term patterns of state-society relations. The revolutionary model of development often produced unexpected connections with the cultural nexus to enable and nourish local enterprise.

Elvera Kwang Siam Lim Memorial Lecture in Chinese Studies.