At the turn of the twentieth century, the global imperial order was in peril. In cities across the world, revolutionary factions emerged where nationalists deliberated radical, even violent paths to a post- imperial world. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin belonged to and wrote of this world - a world primarily defined by the crisis of the imperial order and the looming question of the future of national communities.

With the rise of an ever more assertive China countries like the UK have a challenge to respond, with competing arguments made for both a complete decoupling and increased trade and cooperation. As Labour’s Shadow Asia Minister, Catherine West MP will outline a progressive way forward for the UK’s engagement with China and the challenges it poses, all with an emphasis on security, values, and trade.

This book (forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2023) examines four big topics in Chinese history and during the present times. The EAST in the title of the book stands for examination, autocracy, stability, and technology. Examination refers to the civil service exam, keju in Chinese, instituted in 587 and thevarious successor tools deployed today by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to homogenize ideas, evaluation metrics and organizational process.

The political economy of natural resources is not a new area of study, but the presentation on the Caspian Basin countries is from a less-researched angle. This talk focuses on the characteristics of petro-authoritarianism, factors of strength in despotic governance, and the political effects of rich natural resources in countries such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. The main question is whether the non-transparent management of oil and revenues is paramount to establishing authoritarian governance and the klan regime.