Speakers

Panelists

Michael Hsiao, Chairman of Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation:

“Taiwan’s Democratic Legacy and Role of Dangwai Journal in Popular Mobilization”

Kharis Templeman, Program Manager, Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific, Stanford University:

“Changing Dynamics of the Democracy Movement in Hong Kong”

Christina Fink, Professor of Practice of International Affairs, GWU:

“Understanding Myanmar’s Spring Revolution”

Moderator

Speaker Bios

Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao is the Adjunct Research Fellow of Institute of Sociology, in Academia Sinica and Chair Professor of Hakka Studies, National Central University. He is also the chairman of Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation (TAEF), Executive Committee of Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), National Cheng-Chi University and Consortium of Southeast Asia Studies in Asia (SEASIA). He currently serves as Senior Advisor to the President of Taiwan since 2016. Most recently, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Taiwan Studies to be published by Brill in 2022. His recent publications are: New Social and Political Trends in Hong Kong and Taiwan (co-editor, 2020); The Networks of the Hakka Ethnic Associations in Southeast Asia (co-editor, 2020); Taiwan Studies Revisited (co-editor, 2019); and Middle Class, Civil Society and Democracy in Asia (editor, 2019).

Kharis Templeman is Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where he manages the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific, and a lecturer at Stanford’s Center for East Asian Studies. His areas of expertise include democratic transitions and consolidations, comparative parties and elections, and the politics of Taiwan. He is the editor (with Larry Diamond and Yun-han Chu) of Taiwan’s Democracy Challenged: The Chen Shui-bian Years (2016) and Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Years (2020). His other peer-reviewed research has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Ethnopolitics, The Taiwan Journal of Democracy, International Journal of Taiwan Studies, and The APSA Annals of Comparative Democratization, along with several book chapters. He has also written articles for the Brookings Institution, Atlantic Council, Taiwan Insight, and The Diplomat. Dr. Templeman is a member of the U.S.-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group, a 2019 National Asia Research Program (NARP) Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NRB), and a country coordinator for the Varieties of Democracy project, and from 2016-18 he led the American Political Science Association’s Conference Group on Taiwan Studies (CGOTS). He holds a B.A. (2003) from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. (2012) in political science from the University of Michigan.

Twitter: @kharisborloff 

Christina Fink is a professor of International Affairs at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.  She is a cultural anthropologist who has combined teaching, research, and development work throughout her career, much of which has focused on Myanmar and Thailand. She received her B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Social/Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. She is the author of Living Silence in Burma: Surviving Under Military Rule (2009) as well as more recent journal articles and book chapters on political reform, state-society relations, and land rights in Myanmar. 

Discussant

Syaru Shirley Lin is Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Global Political Economy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Chair of the Asia-Pacific Hub of the Commission on Reform for Resilience, which is reviewing the response to the COVID pandemic. Her book, Taiwan’s China Dilemma, was published in English in 2016 and in Chinese in 2019. She is now researching five East Asian economies caught in the high-income trap. Her analysis and commentary frequently appear in English and Chinese media. Previously a partner at Goldman Sachs, she specialized in the privatization of state-owned enterprises in Asia and spearheaded the firm’s investments in technology start-ups including Alibaba and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. She currently serves on the boards of Goldman Sachs Asia Bank, Langham Hospitality Investments and the Focused Ultrasound Foundation. She is also a member of the Hong Kong Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation. A graduate of Harvard College, she earned her masters and doctorate from the University of Hong Kong after retiring from Goldman Sachs.

Twitter: @syaru

Moderator

Deepa M. Ollapally is Research Professor of International Affairs and the Associate Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University. She directs the Rising Powers Initiative, which tracks foreign policy debates in major powers of Asia and Eurasia. She is a specialist on Indian foreign policy, India-China relations, Indo-Pacific regional and maritime security, and comparative foreign policy outlooks of rising powers and the rise of nationalism in foreign policy. Ollapally is the author of five books including Worldviews of Aspiring Powers (Oxford, 2012) and The Politics of Extremism in South Asia (Cambridge 2008). Her current research focuses on maritime and regional security in the Indo-Pacific. She is currently writing a book on Big Power Competition for Influence in the Indo-Pacific. She has won grants from Carnegie Corporation, MacArthur Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Asia Foundation for work related to India and Asia. She has held senior positions in the policy world including US Institute of Peace, Washington DC and National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India. She is a frequent commentator in the media, including appearances on CNN, BBC, CBS, PBS and Reuters TV.

Twitter: @DeepaOllapally