Date and Time: Friday 19 May, 10:15-11:15

Venue: Room U3039, University of Helsinki Main Building

(If you wish to attend online, please sign up before 16 May. A link will be shared on 17 May).

Speaker: SHIKATA Tatsuo (Kajima Institute of International Peace)

China’s economy has peaked, and Xi Jinping is desperate to unify Taiwan to justify his third term and potential continuation in power beyond it. China has learned lessons from the war in Ukraine and is gaining the sophistication needed to persuade Taiwan to accept unification using military exercises, blockades, economic coercion, fake news, disinformation, and more. The military operations of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fall into a gray zone, and it is difficult for the US to decide whether, when, and how it would intervene. It is equally challenging for Japan to decide whether, when, and how it would support the US instead of supporting Taiwan directly. The 2020s is the most important decade, not only in the Indo–Pacific but also all over the world. In this public seminar, SHIKATA Tatsuo will elaborate on Japan’s perspectives on this timely topic.

SHIKATA Tatsuo is currently a researcher at the Kajima Institute of International Peace, where he is head of a joint study on India–Japan cooperation, coordinator of a joint study on the international order based on liberalism, and a member of a joint study on climate change. SHIKATA formerly worked for 38 years for Mitsui & Co., one of the largest general trading/investment companies in Japan, where he was posted abroad to New York, Toulon, and Singapore.

Moderator: Julie Yu-Wen Chen, Professor of Chinese Studies, University of Helsinki.

Discussants:

Bart Gaens, Leading Research Fellow in Finnish Institute of International Affairs’ Global Security Research Programme.

Monique Taylor, Senior Lecturer in World Politics, University of Helsinki. 

This public seminar is organized by the Helsinki team of “The EU in the Volatile Indo-Pacific Region” funded by the EU (Grant Agreement ID 1010790069)