JWE launches dialogue project with Beijing’s Chongyang Institute

Just World AdminAntiwar, Blog, China, Global Balance, U.S. policy

On October 10, Just World Educational will be launching Phase 2 of its “World After Covid” project, in which it will be focusing on the rapidly shifting balance between the United States and China. Materials from the first phase of the project can be viewed here.

In the first session of Phase 2, to be released in video, audio, and text formats on October 10, JWE President Helena Cobban explores many aspects of the US-China relationship with American maritime-affairs scholar Dr. Lyle Goldstein.

The second session, to be released in all those same formats October 17, will feature Ms. Cobban hosting the first session of the groundbreaking “US-China public dialogue” that Just World Educational is holding in collaboration with the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing. This dialogue session will feature two wonderful specialists:

From Beijing we’ll have Ambassador He Yafei, a Senior Fellow with the Chongyang Institute who has held many high-ranking diplomatic posts including as Counsellor of the Chinese Permanent Mission to the United Nations, and Vice Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

And from here in Washington DC we’ll have Dr. Michael Swaine, who recently became the first Director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Dr. Swaine is the author of numerous books and articles on strategic issues relating to China and other parts of East Asia. He is co-director of a multi-year crisis prevention project with Chinese partners… And he also advises the U.S. government on Asian security issues. 

The second dialogue session, to be released October 31, will address economic and technological issues. Please check back here for more details on the participants.

The conversations in this series will be conducted in English and will be released simultaneously in the US, Chinese, and global media markets in video, audio, and text formats, with subtitles as necessary for each market.

This project is also supported by the international No Cold War coalition, which will bring it broad global dissemination of our breakthrough conversations.

For 20 years earlier in her career, Ms. Cobban contributed a regular column on global affairs to The Christian Science Monitor. In announcing the US-China Dialogue project, she stated that she considers it important, at a time when many political forces in the United States are building up fears of– and hostility toward– China, to try to arrest and reverse that escalation of tensions.

She said she is particularly happy that, through the collaboration with the Chongyang Institute, JWE will be able both to demonstrate to publics in the United States and worldwide that reasoned discussion of tricky issues is still very possible and to start, through such discussions, to lay out fruitful pathways for further cooperation over the months ahead.

In the initial planning for this project, the first “dialogue” session was intended to be a wide-ranging conversation on the past 50 years of US-China relations between veteran U.S. diplomatist Amb. Chas W Freeman, Jr and the Chongyang Institute’s Executive Dean Dr. Wang Wen. However, due to Amb. Freeman’s ill-health that session had to be postponed. We will be glad to inform you when it is possible to set a new date for it.