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Visiting Professor Kerry Taylor Lectures at Peking University
13/06/2019 -- On 13 June 2019, Dr Kerry Taylor successfully delivered a lecture on “New China/New Zealand: Towards a Re-evaluation of New Zealand China Relations 1949-1972” at Peking University. Co-organized by Department of History and the New Zealand Centre at PKU, his talk was met with great enthusiasm and appreciation by fellow scholars and students.
Dr Taylor is the Head of the School of Humanities of Massey University, who has just completed a three-month visiting professorship between March and June 2019 at PKU, at the invitation of Professor Wu Xiaoan of the PKU Department of History. Throughout his academic career, Dr Taylor has researched and published extensively on the history of the “left” and political dissent, as well as the history of communist movements in New Zealand.
Associate Professor Kerry Taylor lecturing at PKU Department of History On 13 June 2019, Dr Kerry Taylor successfully delivered a lecture on “New China/New Zealand: Towards a Re-evaluation of New Zealand China Relations 1949-1972” at Peking University. Co-organized by Department of History and the New Zealand Centre at PKU, his talk was met with great enthusiasm and appreciation by fellow scholars and students. For his lecture, Dr Taylor first provided a brief background on the bilateral relations between China and New Zealand. Based on the historical timeline, the two nations had an intensive period from 1912 to 1949 due to gold mining and missionary works. This was followed by a serious downturn in 1949, when China underwent a national construction and New Zealand became one of the western allies from the Cold War influences. The two shared a flourishing friendship once again when New Zealand officially recognized People’s Republic of China in 1972, which has successfully continued to today’s thriving trade economy.
Kerry Taylor’s lecture was actively echoed by PKU faculty and students Dr Taylor persuasively tackled the China-New Zealand relations during the Cold War, the so-called “Dark Ages”, in which previous scholars saw a significant decline in the level of engagement between the two countries. Through a series of vignettes about New Zealand individuals travelling to China within this period, he proved otherwise that New Zealand has, in fact, had active reciprocal ties with China. Important historical figures such as filmmakers Ramai and Rudall Hayward, historian Willis Airey and politician Vic Wilcox were introduced; all of whom frequently visited China in the 1950s and 60s for political communication and language exchanges. Despite their active role in sustaining an optimistic relationship with China, Dr Taylor argues that their association with “awkward” politics such as the trade union movement, the peace movement and the political left made their voices muted, or left out entirely from the dominant narrative. At the end of his talk, Dr Taylor came to conclude that the contributions made by these important figures for the China-New Zealand relations between 1949 and 1972 should be further acknowledged, as well as the Chinese individuals and groups travelling to New Zealand.
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