Laurentians Learn with Dr. Grace Huang

In partnership with the Alumni Executive Council, the University continues "Laurentians Learn," a series of webinars aimed at expanding learning opportunities from faculty, staff, students, alumni, and parents on important and interesting topics.

Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Shame: Leadership, Legacy, and National Identity of China with Dr. Grace Huang, Professor of Political Science

Join Dr. Huang for an exploration of Chiang Kai-shek, a controversial twentieth century Chinese leader, whose influence continues to shape both mainland China and Taiwan today. Drawing on extensive archival research including diary excerpts, telegrams, and speeches, Dr. Huang reveals how Chiang strategically wielded Confucian concepts of shame (恥) to confront Japanese incursion into China in the 1920s and 1930s.

Dr. Huang then examines Chiang’s complex relationship with Mao Zedong, investigating why Chiang remained obsessed with Mao and the communists, persistently labeling them “bandits,” and how Mao and the Chinese communists countered Chiang’s shame narrative during the Second Sino-Japanese war by advancing their own alternative version of national shame.

The talk concludes by exploring whether Chiang politics of shame evolved after China’s liberation from unequal treaties in 1943 and investigates what lasting impact his shame narrative may have had in contemporary Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. Through tracing Chiang’s deployment of shame throughout the twentieth century, Laurentians will gain insight into how this powerful Confucian concept impacted the trajectory of mainland China and Taiwan, and why it remains a potent cultural resource for Chinese leaders today.

Register by 12:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.