EVENTS

As the Indo-Pacific construct evolves, it is important to look at how this set of relations and its future hold relevance for the like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific region and what could these countries do to minimise the threat emanating from the rising tensions between China and Taiwan. Whether Cross-Strait relations improve in the future depends on policies adopted by the PRC, Taiwan and to some extent, the United States. Thus, delineating strategic currents in the Cross-straits relations requires an analysis of dynamics in the Indo-Pacific along with the development of Taiwan as a resilient stakeholder in the context of post-Covid 19 pandemic recovery. With Beijing unlikely to soften its demand that any leader of Taiwan recognizes that Taiwan is part of China, Cross-Strait tensions will persist, and likely increase and China will step up actions to punish, coerce, and isolate Taiwan. In such a situation, democracies should make greater efforts unilaterally and multilaterally to support Taiwan, in part to strengthen deterrence. In this context, the speakers will discuss the implications for the region and where India’s interests lie.

About the Panelists

Bonnie S. Glaser  is the Director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She was previously senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Ms Glaser is concomitantly a non-resident fellow with the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, and a senior associate with the Pacific Forum. For more than three decades, Ms Glaser has worked at the intersection of Asia-Pacific geopolitics and U.S. policy. From 2008 to mid-2015, she was a senior adviser with the CSIS Freeman Chair in China Studies, and from 2003 to 2008, she was a senior associate in the CSIS International Security Program. Prior to joining CSIS, she served as a consultant for various U.S. government offices, including the Departments of Defense and State. Ms Glaser has published widely in academic and policy journals, including the Washington Quarterly, China Quarterly, Asian Survey, International Security, Contemporary Southeast Asia, American Foreign Policy Interests, Far Eastern Economic Review, and Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, as well as in leading newspapers such as the New York Times and International Herald Tribune.

Alan Hao Yang is the Executive Director of the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation (TAEF). He also serves as Deputy Director of the Institute of International Relations (IIR) and Executive Director of the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) at National Chengchi University, Taiwan. CSEAS is the Secretariat of the Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies in Asia (SEASIA) since 2018. He teaches at the Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies (GIEAS) as a distinguished professor of Southeast Asia studies and offers courses related to regionalism and Sino-Southeast Asian relations. Dr Yang engages in track II diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific. He was the Executive Secretary and Executive Director of the Secretariat of Taiwan Participatory Group to the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP Taiwan) between 2010 to 2018. Dr Yang has been nominated as a senior fellow of George HW Bush Foundation for US-China Relations in the United States since 2021 and a non-resident fellow of the China Desk of the Reconnaissance Research in Kuwait since the July of 2021. His research interests cover ASEAN regionalism, disaster governance, border politics, and resistance politics in Southeast Asia. Dr Yang has published more than 80 journal articles on China-ASEAN relations, international relations of Southeast Asia, security governance and disaster preparedness, as well as the international political economy in the Asia-Pacific in international journals such as Pacific Affairs, Pacific Review, Politics and Governance, Issues & Studies, Journal of Asian Public Policy, Journal of Human Values, China Brief.

Sana Hashmi is a Visiting Fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation. She is a non-resident fellow at Taiwan NextGen Foundation and an affiliated scholar with Research Institute for Indo-Pacific Affairs (RIIPA), Japan. She was Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Fellow at the Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University, in 2020. Formerly, she was a Consultant in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Government of India. Before MEA, she was with the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS). She has also worked at South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR), Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), and Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA). She holds MPhil and PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is the author of the book China’s Approach towards Territorial Disputes: Lessons and Prospects (New Delhi: Knowledge World, 2016). She is currently working on a book project on Situating India in Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy.

About the Chair

Ashok K. Kantha has been the Director of the Institute of Chinese Studies since 2017. A career diplomat, Kantha was Ambassador of India to China until January 2016. Prior to this, he was Secretary (East) at the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi, with responsibility for about 65 countries in India’s extended neighbourhood. His previous assignments include High Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka and Malaysia, Consul General in Hong Kong, Deputy Chief of Mission in Kathmandu (Nepal), and Joint Secretary (East Asia) in the Ministry of External Affairs. Earlier, Kantha served in different capacities at Indian Missions in Singapore, China and the USA, and at headquarters in New Delhi. In his diplomatic career spanning over 38 years, Kantha specialized in Asian affairs, with a particular focus on China. Apart from three assignments in China, he served as Joint Secretary (East Asia) and Director (China) at the Ministry of External Affairs for periods of four years each, closely involved in the formulation and implementation of India’s foreign policy in respect of China and East Asia. He has an advanced certificate in Chinese language from the National University of Singapore.

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