Campus news

Symposium explores China, Taiwan futures

By Kathleen Maclay

MEDIA ADVISORY

ATTENTION: Reporters covering Asian affairs, including business, politics, religion and culture

WHAT:

“China and Taiwan’s ‘Mobile Horizons’: Cross-Strait Through Cross-Discipline,” a two-day conference sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS). The event will showcase the results of three years of research by scholars from UC Berkeley and around the world who have examined the evolution of numerous political, business, cultural and religious networks between the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan — and what the future may hold for them.

The conference is free and open to the public.

WHEN:

8:30 a.m.- 6 p.m., Friday and Saturday, March 4-5.

WHERE:

The Heynes Room of The Faculty Club, in the southeastern quadrant of the campus. For a map, see http://berkeley.edu/map/ .

WHO:

Opening the conference at 8:45 a.m., Friday, March 4, will be former Taiwan Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Tien Hung-mao, who will explore the foundations of cross-strait relations between mainland China and Taiwan.  The view from China will be represented in a special address at 1 p.m., Saturday, March 5, by Yan Xuetong, a political scientist at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

The keynote speaker for the conference will be Dr. Su Chi, a longtime major voice in Taiwan affairs and currently an advisor to Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou, at 1 p.m. Friday, March 4.

Other conference speakers will assess aspects of cross-strait relations, as seen through the lens of their fields of academic study. For a complete list and details, go to http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/ieas.html?event_ID=38516&date=2011-03-04&filter=Secondary%20Event%20Type&filtersel = and click on “Mobile Horizons Conference Program.”

DETAILS:

Wen-hsin Yeh, IEAS director, the Walter and Elise Haas Chair Professor in Asian Studies and the Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Chair in History, says that below “the fire and ice of the Cold War,” Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China steadily engaged in individual and corporate transactions that created important networks and imperatives that have in many ways driven their recent political rapprochement.

A book by the “Mobile Horizons” researchers will be published later.