The launch of the China and Asia-Pacific Studies program (CAPS), Cornell University's pioneering new undergraduate major, will be celebrated with a lecture by Chen Jian, the Michael J. Zak Chair of History for U.S.-China Relations.

The event also is a dedication of the chair, endowed by Zak '75, whose support for the innovative major made it possible to start CAPS this fall.

Chen's talk, "The 'China Challenge' in the 21st Century: A Historian's Perspective," will be held Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 4:30 p.m. in 165 McGraw Hall. It is free and open to the public.

Chen, who joined the Cornell faculty in July 2005, is one of the world's leading historians of U.S.-China relations. He was attracted to Cornell primarily for the opportunity to help develop the CAPS program, a language-intensive major, envisioned by Zak and designed in large part by Sherman Cochran, Cornell's Hu Shih Professor of Chinese History. The program provides students with wide experience, including three years in Ithaca, one semester in Washington, D.C., and one semester in Beijing. For more about CAPS, see http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/caps/.

This semester, Chen began teaching China Encounters the World, the first official CAPS course. In his address, Chen will advocate for China's phenomenal economic growth being taken as a challenge that demands understanding, as opposed to a threat that must be contained. It is a challenge, he argues, that both the Chinese people and the rest of the world can cope with only through mutual respect and cooperation.

Chen will discuss the China challenge from a Chinese perspective: The profound legitimacy crisis that the Chinese Communist state is facing, the Chinese people's difficulty in identifying "China" and its position in the world, and the dilemma of pursuing economic development and democracy simultaneously.

Chen's research interest focuses on Mao Zedong and the Chinese revolution, China's international relations during the Cold War era, 20th-century Sino-American relations and Cold War international history (with East Asia as the main field of investigation). He is currently completing a short biography of Zhou Enlai, a founding member of the Chinese Community Party who became China's premier, and working on a book-length project of China's frontier challenges during the Cold War.