LRCCS Tuesday Lecture Series | The Mirage of Development: The Sichuan Earthquake, One Decade Later

In today’s talk, Professor Sorace argues that the Communist Party is discursively path dependent on specific narratives of legitimation, which constrain its ability to govern and be responsive to people’s needs. In particular, he will discuss the post-2008 Sichuan earthquake reconstruction of Yingxiu township, which was reconstructed to perform the Party’s benevolence, with scant consideration for its impact on the lives of local residents.

Christian Sorace is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Colorado College and a former postdoctoral fellow at the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) at the Australian National University. He is the author of "Shaken Authority: China’s Communist Party and the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake" published in May 2017 with Cornell University Press. His articles have appeared in "Critical Inquiry," "Comparative Politics," "The China Journal," and "The China Quarterly" among other journals. He is also the editor of the Arts and Culture section of a new open-access quarterly journal called "Made in China." His new research focuses on comparative urbanization and land-rights in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, China.