[03/24/2025] NBAS: “State Building in Cold War Asia: Comrades and Competitors on the Sino-Vietnamese Border”

How did two Cold War-era revolutionary states—China and Vietnam—and their people collaborate and compete along their shared border? GW alumna Qingfei Yin dove into archives to unearth the intersections of grand strategy and daily life in China and Vietnam, 1949–1976.

Zoom Webinar Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82352435507?pwd=wrbxaqbTMY3qbysu0m8bRhYi96Uira.1

Passcode: 538678

Speaker

Dr. Qingfei Yin is an Assistant Professor of International History (China and the World) at LSE. As a historian of contemporary China and inter-Asian relations, her research focuses on China’s relations with its Asian neighbors, Asian borderlands, and the Cold War in Asia. She is particularly interested in how the global Cold War interacted with state-building projects in Asia. Her first book State Building in Cold War Asia: Comrades and Competitors on the Sino-Vietnamese Border (Cambridge University Press, 2024) weave together international, national, and transnational-local histories to present a new approach to the highly volatile Sino-Vietnamese relations, centering on the two modernizing revolutionary powers’ competitive and collaborative state building on the borderlands and local responses to it. Subsequent projects are a history of China’s ocean shipping industry and the historical memory of the Sino-Vietnamese Cold War partnership in the two countries. Her research has been funded by the Association for Asian Studies China and Inner Asia Council and the Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies.

Qingfei is an alumna of the LSE-Peking University Double MSc in International Affairs Programme. She studied International Politics and History at Peking University for her undergraduate degrees and completed her PhD in History at George Washington University. Before returning to LSE, she was Assistant Professor of History at Virginia Military Institute. She also serves as the Book Review Editor of Journal of Military History and on the Editorial Board of Cold War History.

Qingfei is a passionate scholar-teacher. She has been nominated for the LSESU Teaching Awards multiple times. In 2024, she is among the recipients of the LSE Excellence in Education Award.

Moderator

Gregg A. Brazinsky works on U.S.-East Asian relations and East Asian international history. He is interested in the flow of commerce, ideas, and culture among Asian countries and across the Pacific. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese and Korean. He is the author of two books: Winning the Third World (2017), which focuses on Sino-American Rivalry in the Third World and Nation Building in South Korea (2007), which explores U.S.-South Korean relations during the Cold War. Currently, he is working on two other book projects. The first examines American nation-building in Asia during the Cold War. The second explores Sino-North Korean relations between 1949 and 1992 and focuses specifically on the development of cultural and economic ties between the two countries. He has received numerous fellowships to support his research including the Kluge Fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Smith Richardson Foundation junior faculty fellowship, and a fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Center. Professor Brazinsky also currently serves as the director of the George Washington Cold War Group.

As director of the Asian Studies Program, Professor Brazinsky has attracted some of the brightest students from around the country and the world who share a commitment to pursuing careers related to Asia. He helped to launch a special mentoring program for Asian Studies MA students and has worked to expand fellowship and professional opportunities for students in the program.