Asian & Middle Eastern Studies Events
[PAST EVENT] "Fear of a Chinese Planet": Lecture and Q&A with Jacob Dreyer '08
Access & Features
- Open to the public
China’s government is taking an increasingly explicit interest in science and technology since the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, held in 2022. For Xi Jinping, "We must regard science and technology as our primary productive force, talent as our primary resource and innovation as our primary driver of growth." How does China’s system come up with surprising technologies like Deepseek’s market-breaking LLM, the EV cars of BYD, and all of the rest? Is the new role of Silicon Valley investors in the American government driven by competition with China, in a sort of mimetic rivalry? And what makes Chinese technology, Chinese? In this talk, longtime Shanghai resident Jacob Dreyer will share a few observations about the structure of our contested technological future.
Jacob Dreyer (Class of ’08, Literary and Cultural Studies) has been based in Shanghai on and off since graduating. He publishes books for Palgrave and writes for Nature, the New York Times, NOEMA, and a wide range of other publications.
Sponsored by: Reves Center Distinguished Lectures Fund, the Charles Center, Modern Languages & Literatures, and the COLL Innovation Fund