Historicizing China’s State Sovereignty

Research seminar given by Professor PANG Laikwan, Choh-Ming Li Professor of Cultural and Religious Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong

The dominant state ideology of today’s China can be argued as “sovereigntism”: the state represents the people to uphold its sovereign autonomy and defend foreign contesting forces. The state acts for the people, and the state becomes the people. While the Chinese state has referred to sovereignty to justify many of its domestic and international policies, this talk historicizes the discourse of sovereignty in modern and contemporary China and exposes the many historical factors behind such naturalization attempts. We discuss how the European concept of state sovereignty was imported into China and how traditional Chinese political concepts were incorporated to form the modern Chinese sovereign theory, which then underwent rapid changes during the turbulent twentieth century.

PANG Laikwan is Professor of Cultural Studies and Head of the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at CUHK. She is the author of many books, including Creativity and its Discontents: China’s Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights (2012), The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China’s Cultural Revolution (2017), The Appearing Demos: Hong Kong During and After the Umbrella Movement (2020) and One and All: The Logic of Chinese Sovereignty (2024). Her books have received the American Library Association (ALA) Choice 2020 Outstanding Academic Title and Chiang King-Kuo Foundation Publication Award.