COMMUNITY EVENTS
Free or low cost Community Events and college courses are intended to provide background on the yearly topic and to touch on areas related to the February Conference that may not be covered in its three-day format. The views of our presenters are their own and may not represent those of the Camden Conference.
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Beyond the Great Firewall: Censorship and Politics in Contemporary China-Kristin Vekasi at Southwest Harbor
February 1, 2020 @ 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm EST
The Camden Conference presents Kristin Vekasi at the Southwest Harbor Public Library on Saturday, February 1 at 1:30 pm. Her talk is titled “Beyond the Great Firewall: Censorship and Politics in Contemporary China”. This event is free and open to all.
The Chinese government has a sophisticated censorship regime, where they directly control or manage the information their citizens can access. This talk explores how information is censored in China, and the implications of censorship for the continued rule of the Chinese Communist Party and China’s foreign relations.
Kristin Vekasi is an assistant professor in the department of political science and School of Policy and International Affairs at the University of Maine, Orono. She received her PhD at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and has conducted extensive research and fieldwork across Northeast Asia, particularly in Japan and China. She has been a visiting fellow with the Japan Foundation at Tokyo University, a Fulbright Fellow at Tohoku University, and a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellow at the Harbin Institute of Technology. Vekasi’s research focuses on Japan-China relations, and how multinational firms manage political risk in a globalized and politicized world. Recent publications discuss how private firms use cultural exchange programs to improve tense international relations, and responses to China’s use of rare earth metals in their economic statecraft.