Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell." So opens Mao's Great Famine: A History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, Frank Dikötter's riveting and magnificently detailed chronicle of the Great Leap Forward. Using previously restricted archives, historian Dikötter reveals that under this initiative the country became the site not only of one of the most deadly mass killings of human history (at least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death) but also the greatest demolition of real estate - and catastrophe for the natural environment - in human history, as up to a third of all housing was turned to rubble and the land savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. Piecing together both the vicious machinations in the corridors of power and the everyday experiences of ordinary people, Dikötter at last gives voice to the dead and disenfranchised.

Frank Dikötter is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Professor of the Modern History of China on leave from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has published nine books on  modern China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China(1992) to China before Mao: The Age of Openness (2007). 

**Books will be available for purchase during this event.**

Professor Yuan Ming was originally trained as a student of western language and literature at Peking University. Prior to her graduate work, she spent eight years in the rural areas in Northwest China. China's Reform and Open Door policy allowed her to do her graduate work in the Law Department of Peking University and then to visit these distinguished institutions abroad: She was a visiting scholar at U.C. Berkeley from 1983 to 1985 and a senior associate member at the St. Antony's College in Oxford University from 1989 to 1990. Since 1995, she was invited and did research at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. She travels a lot and is a frequent speaker at many international gatherings such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Trilateral Commission, the Club of Rome, etc.

Professor Yuan Ming teaches the History of International Relations and Western Classics of International Relations at Peking University. She is also the vice-dean of the School of International Studies and the director of the Center for American Studies at the University. Her publications include Cross Century Assignment: the International Relations Studies in China and A History of International Relations ( 1648-1989), which is one of the leading publications and textbooks in China. She is also the co-editor of Sino-American Relations (1945-1955); the Golden Age of U.S.-China-Japan Relations.

Professor Yuan Ming has organized many international conferences in China, and has wide links in Asia, North America, Europe and Oceania.

Professor Yuan Ming is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and a member of its Foreign Relations Committee. She sits on the boards of a number of institutions in China. She was also the trustee of the Asia Society in New York (1998-2004). In 2004, she joined the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

The Stanford China Program in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies will host a special series of seminars to mark 60 Years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Over the course of the winter and spring terms, we will have six leading scholars, each examining one of the six decades of the PRC's history. Our premise is that history matters. The speaker on each decade will characterize their decade, note shifts within that time, identify the pivotal events, and discuss how the decade shaped what happened afterwards.

Jospeh Fewsmith is the author of four books: China Since Tiananmen: The Politics of Transition (2001), Elite Politics in Contemporary China (2001), The Dilemmas of Reform in China: Political Conflict and Economic Debate (1994), and Party, State, and Local Elites in Republican China: Merchant Organizations and Politics in Shanghai, 1980-1930 (1985). He is very active in the China field, traveling to China frequently and presenting papers at professional conferences such as the Association for Asian Studies and the American Political Science Association. His articles have appeared in such journals as Asian Survey, Comparative Studies in Society and History, The China Journal, The China Quarterly, Current History, The Journal of Contemporary China, Problems of Communism, and Modern China. He is also a research associate of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies at Harvard University.

The Stanford China Program in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies will host a special series of seminars to mark 60 Years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Over the course of the winter and spring terms, we will have six leading scholars, each examining one of the six decades of the PRC's history. Our premise is that history matters. The speaker on each decade will characterize their decade, note shifts within that time, identify the pivotal events, and discuss how the decade shaped what happened afterwards.

Barry Naughton is an authority on the Chinese economy, with an emphasis on issues relating to industry, trade, finance, and China's transition to a market economy. Recent research focuses on regional economic growth in the People's Republic of China and the relationship between foreign trade and investment and regional growth. He is also completing a general textbook on the Chinese economy. Recently completed projects have focused on Chinese trade and technology, in particular, the relationship between the development of the electronics industry in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the growth of trade and investment among those economies. His book, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978-1993, which was published in 1995, is a comprehensive study of China's development from a planned to a market economy that traces the distinctive strategy of transition followed by China, as well as China's superior growth performance. It received the Ohira Memorial Prize in 1996. Naughton is the author of numerous articles on the Chinese economy and is editor or co-editor of three other books: Reforming Asian Socialism: The Growth of Market Institutions, Urban Spaces in Contemporary China, and The China Circle: Economics and Technology in the PRC, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Naughton joined IR/PS in 1988 and was named to the Sokwanlok Chair in Chinese International Affairs in 1998.

The Stanford China Program in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies will host a special series of seminars to mark 60 Years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Over the course of the winter and spring terms, we will have six leading scholars, each examining one of the six decades of the PRC's history. Our premise is that history matters. The speaker on each decade will characterize their decade, note shifts within that time, identify the pivotal events, and discuss how the decade shaped what happened afterwards.

Andrew Walder is the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor in the Department of Sociology at Stanford, where he is also a Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He is currently the Director of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies in Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences, and in past years has served as Chair of Stanford's Department of Sociology and Director of FSI's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  

A political sociologist, Walder has long specialized on the sources of conflict, stability and change in communist regimes and their successor states. His current research focuses on changes in the ownership and control of large Chinese corporations and the parallel emergence of a new corporate elite with varied ties to state agencies. He also continues his research interest in Mao-era China, with a focus on the mass politics of the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1969.

The Stanford China Program in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies will host a special series of seminars to mark 60 Years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Over the course of the winter and spring terms, we will have six leading scholars, each examining one of the six decades of the PRC's history. Our premise is that history matters. The speaker on each decade will characterize their decade, note shifts within that time, identify the pivotal events, and discuss how the decade shaped what happened afterwards.

Professor Teiwes is a scholar with an international reputation in his main area of research, Chinese elite politics. He has written extensively on re-evaluations of Chinese Communist Party history, 1935-76, and is currently researching leadership politics in the post-Mao era. His wider areas of interest lie in Chinese politics more broadly, communist and post-communist systems, the international communist movement, and American foreign policy. He is the author of several works, including Politics and Purges in China (1979, 2nd ed. 1993), Politics at Mao's Court (1990), The Tragedy of Lin Biao (1996), China's Road to Disaster (1999), and The End of the Maoist Era (2007) (the latter three studies co-authored with Warren Sun).

The Stanford China Program in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies will host a special series of seminars to mark 60 Years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Over the course of the winter and spring terms, we will have six leading scholars, each examining one of the six decades of the PRC's history. Our premise is that history matters. The speaker on each decade will characterize their decade, note shifts within that time, identify the pivotal events, and discuss how the decade shaped what happened afterwards.

Roderick MacFarquhar is the Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science and formerly Director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. His publications include The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals, The Sino-Soviet Dispute, China under Mao; Sino-American Relations, 1949-1971; The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao; the final two volumes of the Cambridge History of China (edited with the late John Fairbank); The Politics of China 2nd Ed: The Eras of Mao and Deng; and a trilogy, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. He was the founding editor of "The China Quarterly, and has been a fellow at Columbia University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Royal Institute for International Affairs. In previous personae, he has been a journalist, a TV commentator, and a Member of Parliament. His most recent, jointly-authored book on the Cultural Revolution entitled Mao's Last Revolution was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2006.

The Stanford China Program in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies will host a special series of seminars to mark 60 Years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Over the course of the winter and spring terms, we will have six leading scholars, each examining one of the six decades of the PRC's history. Our premise is that history matters. The speaker on each decade will characterize their decade, note shifts within that time, identify the pivotal events, and discuss how the decade shaped what happened afterwards.

David Bachman is Professor of Chinese Domestic and Foreign Politics and US-China Relations at the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. He received his BA in History at Swathmore College and both his MA and Ph.D in Political Science at Stanford University.