EAI has sought to create an environment in which our interns can feel a sense of belonging and solidarity with the institute. To this end, EAI has been holding Intern Seminars every Monday to provide educational incentives to our dear interns.
 
Through these Intern Seminars, EAI is hoping that our interns can participate more actively and freely in our institute’s activities and acquire new knowledge that they may not encounter at their schools. Also, we hope these events contribute to developing a long-term relationship between EAI and our interns by providing opportunities to learn, expand their networks with other young scholars while seeking to improve communication with EAI fellows.
 
As a part of the Intern Seminar program, Research Fellow Benjamin A. Engel hosted a roundtable discussion  titled Democracy and China: The Modernization Theory at Work? The presentation included ample time for the students to raise questions and comments on the definition of democracy, modernization theory and the political future of China.
 
Presenter
Benjamin A. Engel, Program Officer, Peace and Security Research Unit
 
Participants
Daeun Choi, University of Manchester
Gahee Cho, Sookmyung Women’s University
Lamyae Dahbi, Sungkyunkwan University
Gordon Gatlin, Yonsei University
Diana Kang, Seoul National University, GSIS
Kristen Kim, University of California, Berkeley
Taeyoung Kim, Gachon University
Jihye Jeong, Seoul National University
Hyeonseong Park, Korea University
Jin Young Park, Ewha Womans University

 
 
Writers
Gordon Gatlin, Peace and Security Unit Intern (Yonsei University)
 
Research Fellow and Program Officer of the Peace and Security Research Unit Benjamin Engel hosted the roundtable discussion and presented the interns with concepts that are essential to understanding democratization, its history in East Asia and the prospects of its development in China.

The presentation centered on the complexities and subtleties of academic definitions of democracy, the particulars of modernization theory and the Chinese political experience. Attendees were able to quickly pick up the concepts in order to realize a productive discussion covering examples of both where modernization has been followed by democratization and where it has not. The evolving nature of the Chinese legal system was of particular interest to the interns considering traditional top-down enforcement and recent purported reforms and rhetoric on the rule of law under President Xi Jinping.