2022 Peter L. Lee Endowed Lecture in East Asian Culture and Civilization

Tuesday, Nov. 15,
4 p.m. reception, 4:30–6 p.m. lecture
Harding 142
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Chin-Hao Huang, associate professor of political science at Yale-NUS College, will deliver the 2022 Peter L. Lee Endowed Lecture in East Asian Culture and Civilization and speak about his recently published book with David Kang, State Formation through Emulation: The East Asian Model (Cambridge University Press, 2022). 

Neither war nor preparations for war were the cause or effect of state formation in historical East Asia. Instead, emulation of China—the hegemon with a civilizational influence—drove the rapid formation of centralized, bureaucratically administered, territorial governments in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, all of which occurred a thousand years earlier than Europe. Furthermore, East Asian countries engaged in state-building not to spur conflict or to suppress revolt. In fact, war was relatively rare and there was no balance of power system with regular existential threats—the longevity of the East Asian dynasties is evidence of both the peacefulness of their neighborhood and their internal stability. Huang and Kang challenge the assumption that the European experience with war and state-making was universal. More importantly, they broaden the scope of state formation in East Asia beyond the study of China itself and show how countries in the region interacted and learned from each other and China to develop strong capacities and stable borders.

Chin-Hao Huang is associate professor of political science at Yale-NUS College. His research and teaching focus on Chinese foreign policy, the international relations of East Asia, and international security. He is the recipient of the Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellowship on Contemporary Southeast Asia (2018-2019) and the American Political Science Association’s Foreign Policy Section Best Paper Award (2014). Huang’s latest research has been published in such disciplinary and field-relevant journals as International Organization; Cambridge Review of International Affairs; Foreign Policy Analysis; The China Quarterly; and Asian Survey, among others. He is the author or co-author of three books, including his latest manuscript, “Power and Restraint in China’s Rise” (Columbia University Press, 2022).

Thanks to a generous contribution by Dr. Peter Lai Sun Lee ’64, Seattle University established the Peter L. Lee Endowed Lectureship in East Asian Culture and Civilization in April 2015. Housed in the College of Arts and Sciences and managed by the director of Asian Studies, the lectureship brings to campus prominent experts to explore the impact of East Asian thought and tradition on contemporary global issues.