Recalibrating Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy and the US Indo-Pacific Strategy in 2024

Wednesday, August, 14, 2024 from 9:30PM – 11:00AM (EDT)
Webcast
About this event:
The Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) is pleased to invite you to a panel discussion, Recalibrating Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy and the US Indo-Pacific Strategy and in 2024.” The US Indo-Pacific Strategy, which started in the Trump Administration and continued into the Biden Administration has now entered six years. While there are notable differences in the two administrations, a focus on the Indo-Pacific has remained broadly consistent. Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy (NSP), which is a signature foreign policy initiative of the Tsai Ing-wen Administration, aimed at enhancing Taiwan’s economic and people-to-people ties with the region is now entering its eighth year. Although President Lai Ching-te has not directly expressed his views on the NSP since becoming president, he has underscored “Shin-Lai” (trustworthy) diplomacy as his approach to foreign policy. What are the implications of this for Taiwan’s foreign policy—and in particular the NSP—under the Lai Administration? This expert panel will examine these new political dynamics and assess the features of these two approaches in 2024, while looking for ways in which to advance the complementary interests and goals of both.
The event will be live-streamed through YouTube beginning on Wednesday, August 14 at 9:30AM EDT. Questions for the panel may either be sent by e-mail to contact[at]globaltaiwan.org, or through the chat function on YouTube. Please direct questions or concerns to GTI Program Manager Adrienne Wu at awu[at]globaltaiwan.org.
The Panelists:
Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao is chairman of the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation and chairman of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at National Chengchi University. He is also an adjunct research fellow with the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica and a professor of sociology at National Taiwan University and National Sun Yat-Sen University. Hsiao is also chair professor of Hakka Studies, National Central University. He served as national policy advisor to the president of Taiwan between 1996 and 2006, and is currently senior advisor to the president of Taiwan. His recent publications include Middle Class, Civil Society and Democracy in East Asia (2019), Citizens, Civil Society and Heritage-making in Asia (2017) and Coping with China Risk: The Challenge to Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese Firms(2016).
Colonel Trey Meeks (USAF, ret.) is managing principal at The Asia Group. He has a proven track record enabling aerospace and defense clients to capture billions in successful campaigns, mediate delicate international settlements, establish strategically salient relationships, upgrade regional brand profiles and achieve business expansion objectives in numerous Asian markets by designing and implementing strategic campaigns and targeting discrete business opportunities. Additionally, his strategic insights have helped inform risk mitigation approaches for a diverse group of Fortune 100 companies heavily invested in Indo-Pacific markets highly subject to regional volatility. Prior to joining The Asia Group, Colonel Meeks served as the chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation at both the US Embassy in Singapore and the US Embassy in Brunei Darussalam to lead all defense sales and cooperation activities. In this role, he oversaw direct support for high-value acquisition, sustainment, and upgrade efforts by US defense firms as well as partner capability development efforts. He also served as primary liaison between the US Arms Transfer and Technology Release Senior Steering Group and Singapore’s Defense Technology Committee, where he regularly collaborated to solve complex technology transfer and national disclosure policy issues. He simultaneously managed the US government’s largest foreign training and education program with over 1000 students per year, and led US inter-agency support for the Singapore Airshow and the International Maritime Defense Exhibition (IMDEX), the largest aerospace and maritime defense events of their kind in Asia.
Alex Wong is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. His research spans US national security policy and foreign affairs, with a particular focus on US strategy in the Indo-Pacific region and the future of the Korean Peninsula. Mr. Wong is chairman of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan panel appointed by Congress to examine the national security implications of the trade and economic relationship with China. Mr. Wong most recently served in the executive branch as the deputy special representative for North Korea and the deputy assistant secretary for North Korea at the Department of State. In that position, he was the number two negotiator in denuclearization talks with North Korea and led the formulation and implementation of US diplomatic and technical policy across multiple executive branch agencies. He also guided the US-led international pressure campaign on North Korea, including sanctions policy, counterproliferation, diplomatic isolation, and combatting illicit DPRK cyber activity.
Alan H. Yang is a distinguished professor of Southeast Asian studies at the Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies (GIEAS) and deputy director of the Institute of International Relations (IIR) at National Chengchi University (NCCU), Taiwan. He has been engaging in think tank diplomacy and currently works as the executive director for NCCU’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies which serves as the secretariat of the Consortium of Southeast Asian Studies in Asia (SEASIA), and also the executive director of Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation (TAEF), a leading pilot think tank based in Taipei for promoting Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy (NSP) advocated by President Tsai Ing-Wen. Yang’s research interests cover international relations theories, international relations and regionalism in Southeast Asia, environmental governance and disaster resilience, border politics and politics of resistance in Southeast Asia, foreign policy and soft power analysis with specific focus on China’s Confucius Institute and Taiwan’s NSP. Yang’s latest publications include China’s Soft Footprint in Southeast Asia, co-edited with Maris Diokno and H. H. Michael Hsiao and “Weaponized Interdependence: China’s Economic Statecraft and Social Penetration against Taiwan.” He is also a frequent contributor to the Global Taiwan Brief, The National Interests, The Diplomat, PacNet Commentary, Taiwan Insight, Rappler and East Asia Forum.
The Moderator:
Russell Hsiao is the executive director of GTI, senior fellow at The Jamestown Foundation, and adjunct fellow at Pacific Forum. He is a former Penn Kemble fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy and visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia. He previously served as a senior research fellow at The Project 2049 Institute and national security fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Prior to those positions he was the editor of China Brief at The Jamestown Foundation from October 2007 to July 2011 and a special associate in the International Cooperation Department at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. While in law school, he clerked within the Office of the Chairman at the Federal Communications Commission and the Interagency Trade Enforcement Center at the Office of the US Trade Representative. Hsiao received his JD and certificate from the Law and Technology Institute at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law where he served as the editor-in-chief of the Catholic University’s Journal of Law and Technology. He received a BA in international studies from the American University’s School of International Service and the University Honors Program.
URL: https://globaltaiwan.org/events/recalibrating-taiwans-new-southbound-policy/