The Three Things I Learnt About China

Professor T H Barrett

Why has British education failed to take seriously the task of understanding China? Why study Chinese history when China is changing so fast? Why do criticisms of China focus so frequently on matters of religion? These are three questions with no ready-made answers. But some basic information on each question is already available that should not be ignored if there is to be any hope of progress. This lecture sums up what we need to know now.

At the age of sixteen T. H. Barrett resolved to learn more about Asian history, so after gaining first class honours with distinction in Chinese Studies at Cambridge he studied Buddhism at Yale and Japanese in Tokyo. Following over a decade teaching at Cambridge he was appointed Professor of East Asian History at SOAS twenty-seven years ago. Since then his publications have been warmly reviewed not only in academic journals but also in newspapers and magazines across America, Europe and Asia, besides having been translated into French, German, Italian, Chinese and Japanese, while his media work has included writing for the Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books and more recently The Independent, and among his radio and television appearances have been several contributions to ‘In Our Time’ on BBC Radio 4.

Professor T H Barrett: The Three Things I Learnt About China

Although a part of the Inaugural Lecture Series, this is his last lecture for SOAS.

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