Archives & Recordings – Page 6 – Sigur Center for Asian Studies

Engaging Indian Millennials and Gen-Z on Critical Issues in U.S.-India Relations

February 9, 2022February 16, 2022Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Roundtable

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

7:30 PM – 9:00 PM IST | 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM EDT

WebEx Event

7:30-7:40 PM IST | 9:00-9:10 AM EDT — Opening Remarks

Welcome: N. Manoharan, Director, Centre for East Asian Studies, CHRIST (Deemed to be University)

Inauguration: Joseph C.C., Pro-Vice Chancellor and Professor, Department of International Studies, Political Science and History, CHRIST (Deemed to be University)

Introduction: Deepa M. Ollapally, Director, Rising Powers Initiative and Research Professor of International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University

7:40-8:20 PM IST | 9:10-9:50 AM EDT — Views on Cybersecurity

Christopher Painter, President, The Global Forum on Cyber Expertise Foundation

Latha Reddy, Co-Chair, The Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace

Interaction with Select Students/Scholars and Q & A (20 minutes)

Deepa Ollapally, Moderator

8:20-9:00 PM IST | 9:50-10:30 AM EDT — Views on Digital Media

Jay Gullish, Head of Digital Economy Committee, Media and Entertainment Committee and Privacy Working Group, U.S.-India Business Council

Joyojeet Pal, Associate Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan

Interaction with Select Students/Scholars and Q & A (20 minutes)

Deepa Ollapally, Moderator

Vote of Thanks

Madhumati Deshpande, Department Coordinator and Assistant Professor, Department of International Studies, Political Science and History, CHRIST (Deemed to be University)

Speaker Bios

Chris Painter (@C_Painter) is President of The Global Forum on Cyber Expertise Foundation and a global leader on cybersecurity and cyber policy, cyber diplomacy and combatting cybercrime. He has been on the vanguard of U.S. and international cyber issues for over twenty five years—first as a prosecutor of some of the most high-profile cybercrime cases in the country and then as a senior official at the Department of Justice, FBI, the National Security Council and the State Department.
In his most recent role as America’s top cyber diplomat, Painter pioneered the Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues — the first high-level position and office dedicated to advancing the diplomatic aspects of cyber issues ranging from national security to human rights matters. He was instrumental in negotiating a landmark agreement regarding the theft of intellectual property with China, negotiating a comprehensive cyber cooperation agreement with India, and leading cyber dialogues and capacity building programs with dozens of countries in Europe, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa. He spearheaded the promotion of an international framework of cyber stability that includes building a consensus around norms of acceptable behavior and getting agreement on transparency and confidence-building measures designed to reduce the risk of miscalculation that could inadvertently lead to conflict in cyberspace.

Prior to joining the State Department, Painter served in the White House as Senior Director for Cyber Policy and was a top member of the team that conducted the President’s Cyberspace Policy Review in 2009. He went on to set up a new directorate in the National Security Council to tackle cyber issues.

Painter is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Bartels World Affairs Fellow from Cornell University, the prestigious RSA Award for Excellence in the Field of Public Policy and the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service. He is a graduate of Stanford Law School.

Latha Reddy (@lathareddy51) is Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace and the former Deputy National Security Adviser of India where she was responsible for cybersecurity and other critical internal and external security issues. She also served as a Commissioner on the Global Commission on Internet Governance.
Reddy has extensive experience in foreign policy, and in bilateral, regional and multilateral negotiations. In addition, she has expertise on security and strategic issues and has worked on strategic technology policies, particularly on cyber issues relating to cyber security policy, international cyber cooperation and Internet governance.

She had a distinguished career in the Indian Foreign Service, serving in Lisbon, Washington D.C., Kathmandu, Brasilia, Durban, Vienna and Bangkok. She served as Ambassador of India to Portugal (2004-2006) and to Thailand (2007-2009). She was Secretary (East) in the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi (2010-2011) with overall charge of India’s bilateral and regional relations with Asia. She was then appointed as India’s Deputy National Security Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office from 2011-2013.
Reddy is involved with several organizations and think-tanks, both globally and in India. She is currently, among other positions, serving as a Distinguished Fellow in the EastWest Institute in the US and the Observer Research Foundation in India and Member of the International Advisory Board, Kaspersky Labs, Moscow.

Jay Gullish leads the U.S.-India Business Council’s Digital Economy Committee, Media and Entertainment Committee and Privacy Working Group. Gullish has promoted digital development in more than 20 countries over his 25 years of experience in government, industry, and civil society across the telecoms, information technology, satcom, and cyber sectors.

Most recently, Gullish served as a digital policy officer at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi covering cyber policy, telecommunications, information technology, digital inclusion, and commercial space. While at the Embassy, he aligned U.S. cyber policy toward India across multiple in-country USG agencies and consulates on behalf of the State Department’s Coordinator for Cyber Issues (S/CCI).
Gullish was also the in-country lead for the U.S.-India ICT Working Group and the U.S.-India Cyber Consultations. He previously worked in India’s outsourcing industry and lived and worked in India for over five years. He has international technology experience in southern Africa, Israel, and Vietnam.

Joyojeet Pal (@joyopal) is Associate Professor at the School of Information, University of Michigan. Prior to his current position, he was a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. He teaches User Experience and Client-based design and project implementation to students of Human Computer Interaction.

Pal has worked on user experience and accessibility in low- and middle-income countries. He is also interested in the role of social media and the app ecology on labor, especially in India. His research has looked at the use of social media in political communication in India, specifically on the role of political branding online in India. He is one of the technical collaborators on the Unfinished Sentences project examining oral histories of the El Salvador civil war and leads the Colombia Digital Culture project at the University of Michigan.

He researched and produced the award-winning documentary, “For the Love of a Man” based on the fan following of South Indian film star Rajnikanth. He has published widely on digital access, e-literacy, media discourse and politics and social media.

Pal has been a visiting scholar at numerous institutions around the world including University of Tokyo; Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University; and ATLAS Institute, University of Colorado at Boulder. He received his PhD in City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley.

Dr. Fr. Joseph C. C. (@ChristBangalore) is Pro-Vice Chancellor and Professor, Department of International Studies and History, CHRIST (Deemed to be University). He is also Director of Student Affairs, at the University. A noted expert on maritime history, Fr. Jose is a member of both the Indian History Congress and South Indian History Congress. He has authored or co-authored four books and numerous peer-reviewed articles on wide-ranging issues and presented papers at both national and international conferences. He recently edited a book, Revisiting a Treasure Trove: Perspectives on the Collection at St Kuriakose Elias Chavara Archives and Research Centre. One of his latest publications is “Organization Culture and Work Values of Global Firms: Merging Eastern and Western Perspectives.”

His areas of interest are Maritime Studies, Organizational Culture and Work Values.

Apart from history, Dr. Fr. Jose is well versed in theology and philosophy. He is a passionate teacher and an able administrator.

He holds a PhD in History from Pondicherry University, India.

portrait of Deepa Ollapally in professional attire

Deepa M. Ollapally (@DeepaOllapally) 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). Her current research focuses on maritime and regional security in the Indo-Pacific and is 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.

Ollapally has held senior positions in the policy world including US Institute of Peace, and National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

N. Manoharan (@ChristBangalore) is Director, Centre for East Asian Studies, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru. He earlier served at the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS), Prime Minister’s Office, and Ministry of Defence, New Delhi. He was South Asia Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center Washington and is a recipient of Mahbub-ul Haq international award for research.

His areas of interest include internal security, terrorism, Sri Lanka, Maldives, human rights, ethnic conflicts, multiculturalism, security sector reforms and conflict resolution.

His main books include: Developing Democracies, Counter-terror Laws and Security: Lessons from India and Sri Lanka; ‘Security Deficit’: A Comprehensive Internal Security Strategy for India; India’s War on Terror; SAARC: Towards Greater Connectivity; Ethnic Violence and Human Rights in Sri Lanka. Manoharan’s forthcoming book is on Federal Aspects of Foreign Policy: The Role of Tamil Nadu Fishermen Issue in India-Sri Lanka Relations. He writes regularly for leading newspapers, websites and reputed peer-reviewed international journals.

Manoharan has a PhD from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Madhumati Deshpande (@ChristBangalore) is the Department Coordinator and Assistant Professor in the Department of International Studies, Political Science and History, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bangalore.

Her areas of research interest include international relations and foreign policy analysis, Indian foreign policy, US foreign policy and political theory. Deshpande has previously been a graduate assistant and election observer in the Jimmy Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia and observed elections in East Timor and Guyana. She also held the position of editor for Springer Reference works. She has published several articles in various peer reviewed journals and three book chapters.

She completed her Masters in Political Science from Karnataka University, Dharwad and holds a PhD from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

The George Washington University (Washington D.C.) and Christ University (Bangalore)

2/11/2022 | Southeast Asia and the Future of the Rules-based (Liberal) Order

January 20, 2022February 11, 2022Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Friday, February 11, 2022

12:30 PM – 1:30 PM EST

WebEx Event

Of late, the notion of a rules-based order (RBO) has been used in many foreign policy speeches, both among American policy makers and those in Southeast Asia. Linked to this notion of a rules-based order is the view that a liberal international order (LIO) best secures the interests of countries around the world, and one that is related to America’s normative preference of how the world should be ordered. However, the growing prominence of so-called illiberal states like China and Russia in recent years have challenged the future of a liberal international order. Drawing from the fieldwork interviews conducted over the past two months, this talk will examine various iterations of the concepts of RBO/LIO among American scholars/thinkers and how they reflect American views towards Southeast Asia and the extent to which countries in the region support America’s vision of the world.

Speaker

Benjamin Ho is Assistant Professor at the China Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Singapore. He obtained his PhD from the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. His research focus includes the study of China’s international relations, with an emphasis on Chinese political worldview and exceptionalism thinking. Other research interests include security multilateralism in the Asia Pacific region with a focus on regional institutions and fora, national security (intelligence), the sociology of religion and public theology (Christianity). His research articles have been published in the America Journal of Chinese Studies, China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, East Asia: An International Quarterly, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Asia Policy, Australian Journal of International Affairs and the Yale Journal of International Affairs. Since joining RSIS, Benjamin has been involved in a number of think-tank events and conferences including the Track II Network of ASEAN Defence and Security Institutions (NADI), the Pacific Young Leaders programme and CSCAP meetings.

Moderator

portrait of David Shambaugh in professional attire

David Shambaugh (he/him) joined the faculty at GW in 1996 as Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science & International Affairs. In 2017 he was appointed to an endowed chair as Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science & international Affairs.

In 1998, he founded the China Policy Program. The China Policy Program was created to build upon the Elliott School’s longstanding expertise and involvement in U.S.-China relations and contemporary Chinese affairs and to serve primarily as an outreach program to the policy community in Washington, officials and China specialists around the world, the media, and the public. Highlights of CPP’s programming include sponsoring tailored briefings for Executive Branch officials, Congressional staff, and Members of Congress related to China and U.S.-China relations or for members of the corporate community on China; receiving and briefing visiting delegations from Asia, Europe, and the United States on issues related to China; and sponsoring media briefings, pegged to current and medium-term events in China and U.S.-China relations.

Professor Shambaugh has been selected for numerous awards and grants, including as a Senior Fulbright Scholar (at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Distinguished Research Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore, and other visiting appointments in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and Russia. He has received research grants from the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Hinrich Foundation, German Marshall Fund, British Academy, and U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

book cover of the sound of salvation next to title of event

1/31/2022 | New Books in Asian Studies: The Sound of Salvation with Guangtian Ha

January 10, 2022February 4, 2022Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Monday, January 31, 2022

12:00 PM – 1:15 PM EST

WebEx Event

In this upcoming edition of the 2022 New Books in Asian Studies series, the Sigur Center will host a discussion of The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China with author Guangtian Ha, Assistant Professor of Religion at Haverford College. The event will be moderated by Eric Schluessel, Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at GW.

The Jahriyya Sufis—a primarily Sinophone order of Naqshbandiyya Sufism in northwestern China—inhabit a unique religious soundscape. The hallmark of their spiritual practice is the “loud” (jahr) remembrance of God in liturgical rituals featuring distinctive melodic vocal chants.

The first ethnography of this order in any language, The Sound of Salvation draws on nearly a decade of fieldwork to reveal the intricacies and importance of Jahriyya vocal recitation. Guangtian Ha examines how the use of voice in liturgy helps the Jahriyya to sustain their faith and the ways it has enabled them to endure political persecution over the past two and a half centuries. He situates the Jahriyya in a global multilingual network of Sufis and shows how their characteristic soundscapes result from transcultural interactions among Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and Chinese Muslim communities. Ha argues that the resilience of Jahriyya Sufism stems from the diversity and multiplicity of liturgical practice, which he shows to be rooted in notions of Sufi sainthood. He considers the movement of Jahriyya vocal recitation to new media forms and foregrounds the gendered opposition of male voices and female silence that structures the group’s rituals.

Spanning diverse disciplines—including anthropology, ethnomusicology, Islamic studies, sound studies, and media studies—and using Arabic, Persian, and Chinese sources, The Sound of Salvation offers new perspectives on the importance of sound to religious practice, the role of gender in Chinese Islam, and the links connecting Chinese Muslims to the broader Islamic world.

The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China can be purchased from Columbia University Press.

Speaker

Guangtian Ha is Assistant Professor of Religion at Haverford College. Prior to joining Haverford, he was a postdoctoral research fellow and research associate at SOAS, University of London. He is the co-editor of The Contest of the Fruits (MIT, 2021; with Slavs and Tatars) and Ethnographies of Islam in China (Hawai’i, 2020; with Rachel Harris and Maria Jaschok). He received his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University.

Moderator

Eric Schluessel is a social historian of China and Central Asia, and his work focuses on Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Land of Strangers, his first monograph, uses local archival and manuscript sources in Chinese and Chaghatay Turkic to explore the ramifications of a project undertaken in the last decades of the Qing empire to transform Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking Muslims into Chinese-speaking Confucians. Schluessel’s current project, Exiled Gods, delves into Han Chinese settler culture and religion to illuminate the history of a diasporic community of demobilized soldiers and their descendants that spanned the Qing empire. Thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, Schluessel is also completing a translation and critical edition of the Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī of Mullah Mūsa Sayrāmī, which is an important Chaghatay-language chronicle of nineteenth-century Xinjiang. Ongoing research builds off of this and other manuscript, documentary, and memoir sources to reconstruct an economic history of Xinjiang from below. Schluessel previously taught at the University of Montana in Missoula and spent the 2018–2019 academic year as a Mellow Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

event banner for murakami haruki and our years of pilgrimage book talk event

12/9/2021 | New Books in Asian Studies: Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage

November 29, 2021January 26, 2022Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Thursday, December 9, 2021

11:00 AM – 12:30 PM EST

WebEx Event

In this upcoming edition of the 2021 New Books in Asian Studies series, the Sigur Center will host a discussion of Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage, featuring insights from editors Gitte Marianne Hansen (Newcastle University, UK) and Michael Tsang (Birkbeck, University of London), and contributors Ted Goossen (York University, Canada), Jay Rubin (Harvard University), and Barbara E. Thornbury (Temple University). The discussion will be moderated by Gregg Brazinsky, Sigur Center Interim Director and Professor of History and International Affairs at GW. The webinar will take place from 11:00 AM EST to 12:30 PM EST on WebEx.

Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage is a timely and expansive volume on Murakami Haruki, arguably Japan’s most high-profile contemporary writer. With contributions from prominent Murakami scholars, this book approaches the works of Murakami Haruki through interdisciplinary perspectives, discussing their significance and value through the lenses of history; geography; politics; gender and sexuality; translation; and literary influence and circulation. Together the chapters provide a multifaceted assessment on Murakami’s literary oeuvre in the last four decades, vouching for its continuous importance in understanding the world and Japan in contemporary times. The book also features exclusive material that includes the cultural critic Katō Norihiro’s final work on Murakami – his chapter here is one of the few works ever translated into English – to interviews with Murakami and discussions from his translators and editors, shedding light not only on Murakami’s works as literature but as products of cross-cultural exchanges. This book will prove a valuable resource for students and scholars of Japanese studies, comparative and world literature, cultural studies, and beyond.

Registration closes at 11:00 AM EST on December 8th. Registered guests will receive an email with instructions for joining Webex prior to the event. Be sure to check your spam folder for the email. Media inquiries must be sent to gwmedia@gwu.edu in advance. If you need specific accommodations, please contact gsigur@gwu.edu with at least 3 business days’ notice.

This event is free, open to the public, and will be recorded. Questions can be sent in advance to gsigur@gwu.edu with subject “Murakami Haruki Q&A.”

Speakers

portrait of Ted Goossen in professional attire

Ted Goossen is Professor of Japanese literature at York University, Canada. He was an exchange student at Waseda University in 1969 when Murakami Haruki arrived on campus, and has translated a number of Murakami’s works including his first two novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 as well as Killing Commendatore (the last with Philip Gabriel). His most recent translations are of Shiga Naoya’s Reconciliation (Canongate) and Kawakami Hiromi’s People from My Neighbourhood (Granta). With Motoyuki Shibata and Meg Taylor, he edits the new literary journal, Monkey: New Writing from Japan, successor to Monkey Business.

portrait of Gitte Marianne Hansen in an office space

Gitte Marianne Hansen is Senior Lecturer in Japanese studies at Newcastle University, UK. She is an AHRC Leadership Fellow and PI for the Gendering Murakami Haruki project on Murakami Haruki – an interest she first developed while working as a teaching and research assistant to Katō Norihiro at Waseda University (2004–2009). More generally, her work focuses on Japanese culture since the 1980s, especially issues related to gender and character construction. She is the author of Femininity, Self-harm and Eating Disorders in Japan: Navigating Contradiction in Narrative and Visual Culture (2016).

portrait of Jay Rubin in professional attire

Jay Rubin is Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Harvard University. Translator of Murakami Haruki, Natsume Sōseki, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, among others. He is the author of Injurious to Public Morals, Making Sense of Japanese, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, The Sun Gods, and Murakami Haruki to watashi. Editor of The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories.

Barbara E. Thornbury is Professor of Japanese in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Studies at Temple University. She is the author of four books, including Mapping Tokyo in Fiction and Film (2020) and America’s Japan and Japan’s Performing Arts: Cultural Mobility and Exchange in New York, 1952–2011 (2013). She also co-edited and contributed to Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City (2018).

Michael Tsang is Lecturer of Japanese Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Previously he was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Newcastle University where he also worked on the AHRC-funded Gendering Murakami Haruki project. He researches in postcolonial and world literatures with an East Asian focus. He is the co-editor of Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage (Routledge 2022) and is published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Japan Forum, Sanglap, and other volumes. He is the founding editor of the world’s first bilingual academic journal on Hong Kong, Hong Kong Studies.

Moderator

Gregg Brazinsky (he/him) is Professor of History and International Affairs. He is director of the Asian Studies Program, acting director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, and acting co-director of the East Asia National Resource Center. He is the author of two books: Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy and Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War. His articles have appeared in numerous journals including Diplomatic History and the Journal of Korean Studies. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune and several other media outlets. He is currently working on two books. The first explores American nation building in Asia–especially Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. The second explores Sino-North Korean relations during the Cold War.

event banner with speaker headshots; text: Shedding Taiwan's 'Invisibility Cloak': Global and Regional Prospects

12/6/2021 | Shedding Taiwan’s ‘Invisibility Cloak’: Global and Regional Prospects

November 22, 2021February 17, 2022Archives & Recordings, Taiwan RoundtablesLeave a Comment

Monday, December 6, 2021

8:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Singapore Time

Zoom Event

As we pass the 50th anniversary of United Nations Resolution 2758 which seated the People’s Republic of China at the UN, what are Taiwan’s prospects for gaining greater international space? How has the constrained diplomatic environment for Taiwan evolved most recently and how does the global and regional landscape look multilaterally and otherwise today?

The Sigur Center for Asian Studies presents a Roundtable featuring Liang-Yu Wang, Deputy Representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the U.S. and two leading experts from Asia and U.S., Pasha Hsieh and Michael Mazza.

Speakers

portrait of Liang-Yu Wang standing in front of a word map

Liang-Yu Wang
Deputy Representative, Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the U.S. (Since Jan. 2021)

Experience

Director General, Bureau de Genève, Délégation Culturelle et Économique de Taipei (2018-Jan. 2021)
Deputy Director General, Department of International Organizations, MOFA (2016-2018)
Deputy Director, Political Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States(TECRO) (2014-2016)
First Secretary, Political Division, TECRO (2011-2014)
Section Chief, APEC Task Force, Department of International Organizations, MOFA (2006-2009)
Secretary, Political Division, TECRO (2000-2006)
Officer, Department of International Organizations, MOFA (1997-2000)

Education: MC/MPA, Harvard Kennedy School

Pasha L. Hsieh is an Associate Professor and the Associate Dean (Faculty Matters & Research) at the Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law. He received J.D. and LL.M. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He also holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Free University of Brussels. Prior to academia, he served as a Legal Affairs Officer at the WTO Appellate Body Secretariat and as an associate at Shearman & Sterling LLP. He is the Managing Editor of the Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs. Hsieh has been invited by various institutions such as the European Parliament and the Singapore Judicial College to present on trade law issues. Hsieh’s co-edited book, ASEAN Law in the New Regional Economic Order: Global Trends and Shifting Paradigms, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2019.

Michael Mazza is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Global Taiwan Institute, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He analyzes U.S. defense policy in the Indo-Pacific region, Chinese military modernization, cross-Taiwan Strait relations, Korean Peninsula security, and U.S. interests in Southeast Asia. Mazza writes regularly for the Global Taiwan Brief, GTI’s biweekly publication, and he has contributed to numerous AEI studies on American grand strategy in Asia, U.S. defense strategy in the Asia-Pacific, and Taiwanese defense strategy. His published work includes pieces in The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs. Twitter: @mike_mazza

Moderator

Deepa Ollapally, pictured in professional attire

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). 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.

Ollapally has held senior positions in the policy world including US Institute of Peace; and National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

12/2/2021 | Understanding the Slogan of “Belt and Road Initiative” with Jinghan Zeng

November 19, 2021December 6, 2021Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Recording

Thursday, December 2, 2021

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM EST

Zoom Event

China’s Belt and Road Initiative – a multibillion-dollar project aims to build infrastructure and enhance connectivity across Eurasia and eastern Africa – has been widely seen as China’s Marshall plan. Many argue that Belt and Road as China’s “project of the century” is Beijing’s grand strategy to build a Sino-centric regional if not global order. This talk will discuss why this view is mistaken and why it is best to understand China’s Belt and Road Initiative as a vague political slogan that is open for interpretation and subject to change.

Speaker

Jinghan Zeng is Professor of China and International Studies at Lancaster University where he also directs Lancaster University Confucius Institute. Previously he was a Senior Lecturer of International Relations and Director of Centre for Politics in Africa, Asia and the Middle East (AAME) at Royal Holloway, University of London. He also lectured at University of Warwick and De Montfort University. Before his academic career, he worked for the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York City. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK). He holds degrees from the University of Warwick (PhD, completed within 2 years, 2014) and the University of Pittsburgh (MA, 2011).

Professor Zeng’s research lies in the field of politics and international relations with a focus on China. He is the author of Slogan Politics: Understanding Chinese Foreign Policy Concepts (2020) and The Chinese Communist Party’s Capacity to Rule: Ideology, Legitimacy and Party Cohesion (2015), available in Chinese translation (City University of Hong Kong Press, 2016). He is also the co-editor of One Belt, One Road, One Story? Towards an EU-China Strategic Narrative (Palgrave, forthcoming). He has published over twenty refereed articles in leading journals of politics, international relations and area studies including The Pacific Review, Journal of Contemporary China, International Affairs, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, and Third World Quarterly. He frequently appears in TV and radio broadcasts including the BBC, ABC Australia, Al Jazeera, Voice of America, DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation), Russia Today (RT), China Central Television (CCTV) and China Global Television Network (CGTN). He has been quoted in print/online publications including Financial Times, Forbes, South China Morning Post, PULSO and TODAY. He has written op-ed articles for The Diplomat, BBC (Chinese), The Conversation, Policy Forum among others.

Moderator

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). 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.

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11/30/2021 | Inheriting Abe’s Legacy?: Japan’s Security Discourse under the Kishida Administration

November 15, 2021December 7, 2021Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST

WebEx Event

In October 2021, Fumio Kishida emerged as Japan’s new prime minister and Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) secured general election victory. While he has pledged to further Japan’s foreign policy strategy under the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy and showed his support for sustaining the liberal international order, Kishida also raised the potential for Japan to acquire the capability to strike enemy bases. Taking into account the current political atmosphere in Japan, this talk unravels knowledge production of Japanese security thinking by examining whether the stronger realistic attitude of Japan is being attributed to conservatism in Japan or vice versa.

Speaker

portrait of Misato Matsuoka in professional attire

Misato Matsuoka is Associate Professor at Teikyo University (Japan). Her research interests include International Relations (IR) theories, security studies, and regionalism in the Asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific. Her recent publications are ‘Japan’s International Relations (co-authored with Christopher W. Hughes)’ in Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Japan edited by Hiroko Takeda and Mark Williams (Routledge, 2020) and ‘The role of informal political actors in Japanese security policymaking: the case of Kitaoka Shin’ichi‘ (2020).

Moderator

yellow silhouettes of Chinese political figures on red background

10/27/2021 | Wilson Center – China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now

October 27, 2021November 2, 2021Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT

Event hosted by the Wilson Center

One way to understand the twists and turns of the People’s Republic of China over the past seven decades is through the prism of its top leaders: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. In his new book China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now (Polity Press) Professor David Shambaugh of George Washington University provides a masterful survey of China’s leaders from 1949 to the present day. Please join us for a discussion of China’s leadership with a preeminent scholar of Chinese politics and a longtime contributor to the Wilson Center.

David Shambaugh is Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science, & International Affairs and the founding director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Before joining the GW faculty, Professor Shambaugh taught Chinese politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) and was editor of The China Quarterly.

He also worked at the U.S. Department of State and National Security Council. He served on the board of directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Asia-Pacific Council, and other public policy and scholarly organizations. A frequent commentator in the international media, he sits on numerous editorial boards, and has been a consultant to governments, research institutions, foundations, universities, corporations, banks, and investment funds. Professor Shambaugh has published more than 30 books and 300 articles.

Dr. Shambaugh received his bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from George Washington University, his master’s degree in international affairs from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and his doctorate in political science from the University of Michigan.

event banner with speaker headshots; text: Digital Tech and the Pandemic

11/9/2021 | Digital Tech and the Pandemic: Learning from Taiwan’s Crisis Management and Beyond

October 25, 2021November 19, 2021Archives & Recordings, Taiwan RoundtablesLeave a Comment

Tuesday, November 9, 2021 | 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST

Wednesday, November 10, 2021 | 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM Taipei Time

WebEx Event

As an unprepared world reeled under the onslaught of the pandemic, Taiwan stood out for its early success in managing the spread of the virus. Taiwan continues to outperform other states in handling Covid-19, and a big reason is the way in which digital technology is being skillfully deployed for public health purposes within a demanding, vibrant democracy.

Come and hear Taiwan’s trailblazing Digital Minister Audrey Tang give an insider account of how Taiwan “hacked” the pandemic, got and stayed ahead of the crisis, and in the process further invigorated Taiwan’s democracy. Following her keynote address will be two experts who will speak more broadly on the promise and the perils of the digital space for global public health and what we can learn from Taiwan’s experience.

Speakers

Audrey Tang is Taiwan’s digital minister in charge of Social Innovation. Audrey is known for revitalizing the computer languages Perl and Haskell, as well as building the online spreadsheet system EtherCalc in collaboration with Dan Bricklin. In the public sector, Audrey served on Taiwan national development council’s open data committee and the 12-year basic education curriculum committee; and led the country’s first e-Rulemaking project. In the private sector, Audrey worked as a consultant with Apple on computational linguistics, with Oxford University Press on crowd lexicography, and with Socialtext on social interaction design. In the social sector, Audrey actively contributes to g0v (“gov zero”), a vibrant community focusing on creating tools for the civil society, with the call to “fork the government.”

Chelsea C. Chou is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute of National Development at National Taiwan University. Her research is motivated by an interest in the political economy of policy reform, with a focus on health and social policy in China. Chou received her Ph.D. in the Department of Government at Cornell University. She has published at Journal of Chinese Political Science, Social Policy & Administration, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, Mainland China Studies, and other places. Her broader research fields include Comparative Politics, Authoritarianism, Social Policies, and Chinese Politics.

portrait of Lorien Abroms in casual attire

Lorien Abroms is a Professor of Health Communication & Marketing at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University and serves as the Public Health Governance Cluster Lead at GW’s Institute for Data Democracy and Politics. Dr. Abroms expertise is on the application of digital communication technologies for health promotion. She has developed and evaluated leading mobile health programs for smoking cessation and other types of behavior change. Text2Quit has been offered nationally through quitlines since 2012, with other programs developed by Dr. Abroms offered through the National Cancer Institute’s Smokefree.gov. Dr. Abroms is widely published in leading academic journals including the American Journal of Public Health and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. She is an advisor to the WHO’s Be Healthy Be Mobile initiative.

Moderator

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). 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.

event banner with stock image of Chinese buildings at night; text: 14th Annual Conference on China's Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations

11/5/2021 | 14th Annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations

October 21, 2021November 5, 2021Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

One Currency, Two Markets: China’s Attempt to Internationalize the Renminbi

Friday, November 5, 2021

9:30 AM – 11:00 AM EDT

Zoom Event

The Institute for International Economic Policy is pleased to invite you to the 14th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. This year, the conference will take place as a virtual series. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER).

In this event, HKU’s Edwin Lai will discuss his recent book titled “One Currency, Two Markets: China’s Attempt to Internationalize the Renminbi.” In this book he discusses economic analysis of the future of the international monetary system and the USD, and the rising importance of the RMB. It points out the unsustainability of the dollar standard in the long run, that China has unique incentives to internationalize its currency, and how Hong Kong plays an important role. It explains the real reasons for China to internationalize its currency, including using external commitments to force financial sector reforms (‘daobi’ in Chinese). It applies economic theories accessible to laymen to establish that financial development and openness are crucial for RMB internationalization to succeed, and that greater exchange rate volatility is inevitable due to the ‘open-economy trilemma’. Employing the ‘gravity model’, the book predicts quantitatively that the RMB is likely to be a distant third payment currency after the USD and the euro, but surpassing the Japanese yen in the next decade.

Speaker

Edwin Lai posing for photo leaning on a wall with arms crossed

Edwin Lai is Professor of Economics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology since July 2009, and later jointly appointed as the Director of the Center for Economic Development and jointly appointed as Professor in the Division of Public Policy. He was Senior Research Economist and Adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas of the Federal Reserve System of the USA, from August 2007 to June 2009. Before that he was Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University, Associate Professor at City University of Hong Kong and Associate Professor at Singapore Management University. His main research areas are international economics, industrial organization, growth and internationalization of renminbi. He is a leading scholar in the study of intellectual property rights in the global economy. He has published in American Economic Review, RAND Journal of Economics, International Economic Review, Journal of International Economics and other highly respected journals in economics.

Prof. Lai has been a consultant to the World Bank, visiting scholar/fellow with Boston University, Princeton University, Kobe University, CESifo (University of Munich), Hitotsubashi University and Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research. He is Associate Editor of Review of International Economics (Wiley Publisher), a Fellow of the CESifo Research Network (U of Munich) and a board member of Asia-Pacific Trade Seminars (APTS) Group. He obtained his B.Sc. in engineering from University of Hong Kong and A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.

logos of the Institute for International Economic Policy, GW Center for International Business and Education, and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies