China Seminar | 12 May 1994

China's New Silk Road: Reflections on People and Places Along the New Central Asian Borderlands

Dru Gladney

Please join us for a look at the changing dynamics of the Central Asian States for China’s future development. This talk will address Premier Li Peng’s recent statement on his April trip to Kazakstan, Kyrgyzia, Turkministan, and Usbekistan that China would like to build a “new Silk Road.”

Dru C. Gladney, who received his Ph.D. in social antropology from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1987, is currently serving in a joint appointment as a research fellow in the Program for Cultural Studies at the East-West Center and as associate professor in Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii. He conducts research on ethnic and cultural nationalism, focusing on issues of identity, nation-state formation, transnationalism, representation, and religion with special emphasis on China, Central Asia, and Turkey.

Dr. Gladney was a Fulbright Research Scholar at Bosphorus University in Istanbul, where he conducted research on Turkic Central Asians from China and Inner Asia in 1992-93.

He has also conducted over three years of field research among minority nationalities in China, as well as more recent projects in Kazakstan, Kyrgyzia, and Turkey. He is the author of the award-winning book, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic (Harvard University Press, 1991) and numerous articles.