Will There be WAR in the Taiwan Strait?
(a virtual panel discussion in collaboration with International Manifesto Group)
Date: 2023/02/11 (Saturday)
Time: EST 9:00 a.m., Beijing: 10:00p.m., UK: 2:00p.m., France: 3:00p.m.
Venue: ZOOM & YouTube Live
將近一年以來,美國主導北約在烏克蘭進行代理人戰爭,與此同時,美國與其同夥也讓台灣與東亞籠罩在戰爭危機的陰影之中。一方面,西方媒體以「中國威脅論」的論調散佈反中情緒,另一方面美國、英國、北約夥同日本、南韓直接干預兩岸事務。西方媒體和許多政客喜歡將兩岸關係類比為烏克蘭與俄羅斯的關係,但是無論是歷史上、政治上,兩岸關係與烏克蘭和俄羅斯的關係都是截然不同的。中國人與台灣人,以及亞洲的人民,都正在抵抗在東亞發生另一個代理人戰爭。這次論壇就台灣海峽發生戰爭的可能性、北約的全球角色、西方經濟衰退與不斷攀升的軍國主義等等問題,展開對談!
Will There be WAR in the Taiwan Strait?
(a virtual panel discussion in collaboration with International Manifesto Group)
Date: 2023/02/11 (Saturday)
Time: EST 9:00 a.m., Beijing: 10:00p.m., UK: 2:00p.m., France: 3:00p.m.
Venue: ZOOM & YouTube Live
The brutal US led, NATO proxy war in Ukraine has been going on for almost one year, taking a heavy toll on bother 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 foment “China threat” and anti-Chinese sentiment, the U.S., UK, and NATO blatantly interfere with Taiwan Strait affairs in alliance with Japan and South Korea. The possible Nuclearization of South Korea and the Japan-UK new military alliance agreement encircle mainland China like in the Cold War era and increase tensions for 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 (even Asian) people resist another proxy war in East Asia, as well as ever aggressive imperialism.
In this panel discussion, we will invite speakers from different regions (Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, Europe, and Latin America) to have dialogues about these questions (feel free to adjust and add more):
- Why and how China has been intentionally portrayed as the aggressor while the U.S. government and politicians always destabilize peace, provoke hostility, test the redlines, and increasingly sell more 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?
- About technological aspect of imperialism: Why has TSMC been relocated in the U.S.? Besides trade war and sanction on Chinese high-tech companies, what other means is the U.S. utilizing to curb the technological development of China and other third world countries?
- Is NATO a collective defense mechanism for Europe or an offensive war machine on a global scale?
- What is the international order and rules that the Biden administration envisions?
- Will the economic depression and other crises in the West lead to another world war?
- How should progressive people be united to prevent another disastrous war?
Panel 1:
Moderator: Yan Hairong (Tsinghua University)
Speakers:
Alain Brossat: 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).
Chengpang Lee: 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.
Dic Lo (SOAS): 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.
Yin Zhiguang: a professor in international politics at the Fudan University. His research interest lies mainly in the area of Chinese modern intellectual and legal history, ethnic minority policy, 19-20 century history of international relations, imperial history, and Sino-Middle Eastern relations. His current project investigates liberation and nation-building in the Third World from the 1950s to the 1970s. It particularly interests in the transnational dissemination/reception of mass cultural products in shaping the general public’s encounter, experience and imagination of the Third World Internationalism. His most recent monographs include: A New World: Afro-Asian Solidarity and the PRC’s Imagination of Global Order (Chinese, 2022), and Politics of Art: The Creation Society and the Practice of Theoretical Struggle in Revolutionary China (Brill, 2014). His articles appear in English and Chinese academic journals such as European Journal of International Law, Third World Quarterly, History, Turkish Journal of Sociology, and Kaifang Shidai (Open Times).
Ben Norton: 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.
Sara Flounders: flounders.sara16@gmail.com