The Center for the Study of Contemporary China Speaker Series: An Arab Spring in Beijing? Islam, the Middle East, and China. (Gladney)

The Center for the Study of Contemporary China Speaker Series presents:

 "An Arab Spring in Beijing? Islam, the Middle East, and China"

 Speaker: Dru Gladney, Pomona College

 This talk examines China’s important and changing relationship with the Middle East, especially with regard to the recent tumultuous events there following several uprisings and revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East, known as the “Arab Spring.” Will China ever experience such tumult? How will these changes affect China’s important relationship with the mostly Muslim Middle Eastern states and its energy dependency? How will China’s own 21 million Muslims be affected by these changing relationships? This talk also examines the role of global social media and Western scholarship in shaping and interpreting the “Uyghur problem” in China. Some have suggested that China has already experienced a “twitter revolution” in Xinjiang as early as 2009.