Speaker: So Ryung Choi (Sungkyun University)

Title: The Expansion and Transformation of China's Reconciliation Discourse

Date and Time: May 16, 2025 (Tuesday) 16:30-18:00

Venue: 600th Anniversary Hall Room 10408 (4th floor)

In this lecture, there was an intriguing analysis of the "Harmonious Society" discourse during the Hu Jintao era in China. This discourse was presented as a vision aimed at addressing social imbalances in the country by integrating Confucian thought with socialist values. However, following Xi Jinping's rise to power, new discourses such as the "Chinese Dream" and "Common Prosperity" have emerged, leading to the marginalization of the "harmonious" discourse. The speaker interpreted this not as a simple disappearance of the discourse, but rather as a functional transition—where the unresolved social issues it aimed to address persisted and were instead taken up by other political narratives. The lecture also traced scholarly trends in China related to the study of "harmony," analyzing how this discourse has been received, expanded, critiqued, and transformed. Through this, the speaker sought to explain the processes of political discourse production and transformation in China, as well as the interactions between state discourse and systems of knowledge production. The discussion of the evolution of the "Harmonious Society" discourse provided an important opportunity to understand the complex dynamics of Chinese society.