On the evening of March 26, 2021, the Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IISS), Peking University (PKU) held the 48th session of "North Pavilion Dialogue" lecture series. Mr. Wang Jisi - Boya Chair Professor, President of IISS, Professor of School of International Studies (SIS), PKU, Honorary President of the Chinese Association of American Studies (CAAS), delivered a lecture entiteled "Identity Politics in the USA". Gui Yongtao, Vice President of IISS, Vice President of SIS, PKU hosted the lecture.

Mr. Wang Jisi first introduced the subject by an American film - Knives Out, and pointed out that the film was essentially a political allegory of the contemporary American society, revealing the contradictions between the old immigrants and the rich predominated by the white people and the new immigrants and the poor. He then reviewed the evolution of the identity politics issue with ethnic groups as the core in the American history, and opined that racial politics still existed for a long term even after the 1970s, and the ideological trends of white supremacy and white nationalism reached the peak again during the Trump Administration.

Mr. Wang Jisi summed up four major factors causing identity politics to replace class politics as the core issue of the American politics. First, the United States suffered from the serious problem of income inequality while its economy bloomed over the previous three decades; second, the focus of the Left and the Right gradually shifted from economy to social and cultural subjects; third, the influx of new immigrants of Hispanics, the occurrence of 9·11 attacks, and the impact of Islamic radicals all strengthened identity politics; fourth, various problems bred the social discontent, including mass unemployment of the African-Americans due to industrial restructuring, appearance of social decline in the white working class, and common poverty of new immigrants. Additionally, Mr. Wang Jisi discussed such hot subjects as Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender (LGBT), Black Lives Matter movement, Metoo movement, and hate crimes against the Asian Americans among the current events.

On this basis, Mr. Wang Jisi interpreted identity politics from the academic perspective, and indicated the issue of human "dignity" involved in identity politics. The understanding of the phenomenon could be traced back to the ancient political thoughts of the East and the West, while the arrival of the network era intensified people's identity conflicts.

Mr. Wang Jisi concluded that the core issue of identity politics in the contemporary America was the contradiction between the nationalism in the mainstream ideology tendency of the Republican Party and the liberalism in that of the Democratic Party, and whether this kind of contradiction could be solved was related to the development orientation of the American politics. Finally, Mr. Wang Jisi reflected on the role and future of identity politics from the perspective of world politics.

During the Q&A session, Mr. Wang Jisi exchanged his ideas and discussed with other attendees issues such as whether America faces a full-blown crisis, as well as economic situation and political position of Hispanic immigrants, solutions for contradictions in identity politics, policy response of the Biden Administration, dialectical relationship between social diversity and national unity, comparison of immigration policies of the United States and the European Union.  (Contributed by Zhang Chengyang)

Editor：Li Fangqi    Photographer：Zheng Peijie