Collis Professor of History, Dartmouth College, Pamela Kyle Crossley is a specialist on the Qing empire and modern China, and also writes on Central and Inner Asian history, global history, and the history of horsemanship in Eurasia before the modern period. The Faculty Project invited her to create the video series, "Modern China," and her documentary on Asian horsemanship was featured in the Asian Arts Theatre festival, Gwangju, South Korea, in 2013. Crossley is the author of six books and co-author of two leading textbooks on global history. Her work has been awarded the Joseph R. Levenson Prize of the Association for Asian Studies (for a book in any discipline addressing China before 1800), a Guggenheim fellowship, and numerous other grants. Her books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish. Shorter research works have appeared in The Cambridge History of China, The Cambridge History of World Slavery, and The Cambridge History of Warfare, and in scholarly journals including American Historical Review, Journal of Asian Studies, and Annales. Her commentary has appeared in popular publications including The London Review of Books, The New Republic, New York Times Book Review, History Today, Royal Academy of Arts Magazine, The National Interest, The Wall Street Journal, and the BBC. Her most recent book on China is The Wobbling Pivot: China since 1800 (Wiley/Blackwell, 2010).
Last Updated: June 22, 2017
Conversation
08.21.17Should Publications Compromise to Remain in China?
The prestigious “China Quarterly will continue to publish articles that make it through our rigorous double-blind peer review regardless of topic or sensitivity,” wrote editor Tim Pringle on Monday after days of intense criticism of the brief-lived...
Conversation
07.14.17Liu Xiaobo, 1955-2017
When news this morning reached us that Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo had died, we invited all past contributors to the ChinaFile Conversation to reflect on his life and on his death. Liu died, still in state-custody, eight years into his 11-...
Conversation
06.23.17How Big a Deal Are Guo Wengui’s Allegations?
In a months-long barrage of mudslinging via Twitter and theatrical online videos, Chinese real estate billionaire Guo Wengui has alleged corruption at the highest levels in the Chinese Communist Party—some of which appear to be accurate, some as yet...
Conversation
06.14.17Do Street Protests Work in China?
A rare street protest broke out in China’s biggest city and commercial capital on Saturday night, June 10, when residents of Shanghai marched against new housing rules that some residents claimed have caused the value of their property to plummet...
Conversation
05.25.17Can Free Speech on American Campuses Withstand Chinese Nationalism?
Earlier this week, Kunming native Yang Shuping, a student at the University of Maryland, gave a commencement speech extolling the “fresh air” and “free speech” she experienced while studying in the United States. Video of her speech spread on the...
Conversation
04.04.17What Should We Expect When Trump and Xi Meet in Florida?
On April 6-7, U.S. President Donald Trump will host Xi Jinping in their first face-to-face meeting when China’s President arrives at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The meeting comes early in Trump’s presidency, after a campaign in which he frequently...
Conversation
03.15.17How Does China’s Imperial Past Shape Its Foreign Policy Today?
Throughout most of history China dominated Asia, up until what many Chinese refer to as the “century of humiliation”—when Japan and Western powers invaded or otherwise interfered between 1839 and 1949. Now, with China on the rise again, are Beijing’...
Conversation
12.30.16Rex Tillerson at State: What Will He Mean for U.S.-China Relations?
On December 13, President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team announced the selection of ExxonMobil Chief Executive Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. We asked ChinaFile contributors to respond to the choice with a specific focus on how Tillerson...
Conversation
11.28.16Should Facebook Self-Censor to Enter the Chinese Market?
The social network Facebook has reportedly developed software to suppress posts from users’ feeds in targeted geographic areas, a feature created to help the giant social media network gain access to China, where it is blocked. Facebook Chief...
Conversation
11.09.16How Should Trump Deal with China, and How Should China Deal with Trump?
Donald J. Trump, president-elect of the United States, spent much of his antagonistic campaign blaming China for many of America’s economic ills, and repeatedly making thinly veiled threats of a U.S. trade war with Beijing. How should Trump engage...
Conversation
10.06.16Is the Growing Pessimism About China Warranted?
from Washington Quarterly
There are few more consequential questions in world affairs than China’s uncertain future trajectory. Assumptions of a reformist China integrated into the international community have given way in recent years to serious concerns about the nation’s...
Conversation
08.10.16Is Big Data Increasing Beijing’s Capacity for Control?
China’s authoritarian government is using big data to develop credit scoring systems, and is urging data-sharing between companies and governments, putting ordinary Chinese squarely in the digital spotlight. How should Chinese netizens and global...