In the Eye of the Hurricane
9:30 a.m., Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2007
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

Dr. Shaomin Li will take the audience through China’s modern history, blended with his experience as a farm boy, artist, a participant in the post-Mao reform, a student activist in the pro-democracy movement, a founding CEO of an IT firm, a political prisoner of China, and a scholar of international political economy. The lecture will discuss the causes and consequences of China’s “Great Leap Forward” from a revolutionary state to a red capitalist society, and its impact on the U.S. and the world. Historical and personal photos and art works by Dr. Li will be shown.

Dr. Shaomin Li is a professor of international business at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Born in China in 1956, he witnessed the rise of Mao, the Great Leap Forward and the subsequent famine (1958-1963), and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). With only three years of grade school, Dr. Li entered Peking University through self-learning and went on to receive his Ph.D. from Princeton. In 2001, he was detained by the Chinese secret police for his pro-democracy activities. Under strong condemnation from the international community and the heavy criticism from the U.S. government, the Chinese government released him after five months’ detention.