This important panel discussion, with speakers from different regions in dialogue about the prospects of war in the Taiwan Strait took place on February 11, 2023. You can watch the entire webinar here.
About this event
The brutal US-led, NATO proxy war in Ukraine has been going on for almost one year, taking a heavy toll on both Ukrainian and Russian people. However, the US and its allies, not content with their disastrous policies in Ukraine, are spreading the dark clouds of war over the Taiwan Strait and East Asia. While the Western mainstream media constantly foments “China threat” and anti-Chinese sentiment, the US, UK and NATO blatantly interfere with Taiwan Strait Affairs in alliance with Japan and South Korea. The possible nuclearization of South Korea and the new Japan-UK military agreement encircle mainland China as in the Cold War era. They increase tensions and the chances of war in East Asia. While Western media and many politicians draw similarities between Taiwan-mainland China relations and Ukraine-Russia relations, these situations are fundamentally different in both historical and political factors. Chinese-Taiwanese and other Asian peoples are resisting another proxy war and ever aggressive imperialism.
This panel discussion invites speakers from different regions (Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, Europe, Latin America and the United-States) into dialogue about some of the following questions:
1. Why and how has China been intentionally portrayed as the aggressor while the US routinely destabilizes peace, provokes hostility, tests redlines and sells weapons to Taiwan? Will the American military-industrial complex push for a hot war in the Taiwan Strait? What will be the cause of the war?
2. Why has the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company been relocated in the US? Beyond the trade war and sanctions on Chinese high-tech companies, what means are the US utilizing to curb the technological development of China and other Third World countries?
3. Is NATO a collective defence mechanism for Europe or an offensive war machine on a global scale?
4. What are the international rules and order that the Biden administration envisions?
5. Will economic depression and other crises in the West lead to another world war?
6. How should progressive people be united to prevent another disastrous war?
Speakers
Cheng Pang Lee is an assistant professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He was born in Pingtung, Taiwan, and got his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. He taught at the National University of Singapore and had a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School. Before entering the academy, he worked at a Community University in Taiwan and participated in several social movement organizations in Taiwan. You can view his presentation here.
Dic Lo is Reader in Economics at SOAS University of London. He was formerly chair of the Centre of Chinese Studies at SOAS. He is also a member of the Center of Comparative Political Economy at the Renmin University of China. He was visiting professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Waseda University in Japan. Dic Lo teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on the Chinese economy, development economics, and microeconomics. His areas of research interest include China’s economic transformation, industrialization, “going out”, and the political economy of globalization. His articles have been published in scholarly journals including the China Quarterly, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Review of Radical Political Economics, Journal of Economic Issues, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, and Structural Change and Economic Dynamics. He has also written a wide range of commentaries on China’s political economy, including political developments in Hong Kong and Taiwan. You can view his presentation here.
Alain Brossat is Professor emeritus at the department of philosophy of Paris 8 University and has been a visiting professor at NCTU and NCKU (Taiwan), co-author (with Juan Alberto Ruiz Casado) of Treasure Island: The Discursive Struggle for Taiwan in the Midst of the New Cold War (2022). You can view his presentation here.
Ben Norton is a journalist and analyst. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the independent media outlet Geopolitical Economy Report. He has reported from many countries around the world, and is based in Latin America. You can view his presentation here.
Sara Flounders is a longstanding political activist and author based in New York City. She is a leader of the United National Antiwar Coalition and the International Action Center, and is the author of numerous books, including Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China and the US (co-authored with Lee SiuHin) and NATO in the Balkans: Voices of Opposition (co-authored with Ramsey Clark). You can view her presentation here.
Moderator: Yan Hairong is based in Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, Prof. Yan Hairong’s research interests include China-Africa links, racialization of labor, China’s agrarian change, and collective and cooperative rural economy. She is the author of New Masters, New Servants: Migration, Development, and Women Workers in China (Duke U Press 2008) and has co-authored East Mountain Tiger, West Mountain Tiger: China, Africa, the West and “Colonialism” and has contributed to IPES-Food (till December 2020) and the food sovereignty network in China. You can view her introduction here.
This article was updated on February 25, 2023 to include links to video clips.
