Yuguang "Ludwig" Zhou; Visiting Fellowship 2022/23
Biography
I am a doctoral student of Southeast and East European History at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. I am writing my dissertation on Sino-Yugoslav relations in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I would like to understand why the bilateral relations between the People’s Republic of China and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia intensely warmed up in the years 1977-78, reached the peak around 1979-80 and then gradually stagnated in the eighties (yet remaining very friendly). I am trying to approach the question by analysing Chinese state media’s discourse on Yugoslavia, economists and other social scientists’ studies of Yugoslavia and bilateral people-to-people exchanges. Specifically, my research is concerned with a Chinese interest to learn from Yugoslavia’s socialism, in an era when Yugoslavia itself was sinking into deep crises.
My broad research interests include history of Yugoslavia(s), history of nationalism, and transnational history of socialist ideas and practices.
Motivation
I look forward to working at the Institute of Contemporary History. Among the researchers at the Institute, Dr Maja Lukanc (on diplomacy of Yugoslavia), Dr Marko Zajc (on intellectuals of Slovenia) and Dr Marta Rendla (on social-economic history of socialism in Slovenia) have conducted research on topics close to my interests. I look forward to learning from them, and I hope we can eventually cooperate.
My research will be greatly helped by the works on Yugoslav self-management and diplomacy in the library at the Institute and the National and University Library. Slovenia is particularly interesting for my project, not only because the most developed republic of Yugoslavia provoked a different imagination of socialism in Chinese visitors’ minds, but also because the theory of self-management was critiqued in Slovenia at the same time when the Chinese scholars became enthusiastic about it. I also plan to work at the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia, where documents related to visiting Chinese delegations and outgoing Slovenian delegations to China, as well as Edvard Kardelj’s documents are stored. I also hope to improve my command of the Slovene language.
List of publications
- "Shared Victimhood: The Reporting by the Chinese Newspaper the People’s Daily on the 1999 NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia." Comparative Southeast European Studies, vol. 70, no. 2, 2022, pp. 202-223. https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2021-0027
- “Changing Discourse about Yugoslavia in the People’s Daily (1975‒1980).” China, Yugoslavia, and Socialist Worldmaking: Convergences and Divergences, edited by Zvonimir Stopić, Jure Ramšak, Liang Zhanjun and Jože Pirjevec. Koper: Science and Research Centre Koper, Annales ZRS. to be published 2023.
Visiting duration: March - June, 2023.
