[Recordings] Empire Competition: Southeast Asia as Site of Contestation

This conference was jointly organized by Global Asia Institute, Pace University, and NYSEAN that took place virtually on April 1, 2021 - April 23, 2021. This month-long conference brought together a leading experts from around the world to examine Southeast Asia’s position in the shadow of China, and in the sights of European imperial powers.

The conference addresses questions such as, how has Southeast Asia been subject to power projection from great powers and empires from the past to the present? In what ways has a combination of state-sponsored and voluntary migration to Southeast Asia been a soft power tool for China, or Western countries? How have ethnic Chinese communities in the region been tied to, and shaped by, larger political, social and economic trends at home? How did these similarities and differences of interactions between Chinese diaspora and various Chinese regimes vary across different periods of rule (CCP, KMT, and Qing)? How did these historic relations change under European colonial rule, Japanese military occupation, and post-independent movements? And how is Southeast Asia today addressing great power rivalries between the US and China over the control of maritime space—especially groups of resource-rich islands—and the exercise of maritime jurisdiction related to disputes taking place in international waters?

Recording of the sessions can be viewed in the links below.

Week 1

Panel 1: Great Power Rivalries in Historical Context

Thursday, April 1st, 8:00am-10:00am EDT

*Chris Hulshof (University of Wisconsin, Madison) “Sangsara Dan San Sara: A Reassessment of the Japanese Occupation of Java, 1942-1945” 

*Jeeye Song (University of Florida) “Sovereignty and Colonization in Vietnam”

*Eleanor Choo (Free University of Berlin) “A Shared Frontier: Interrelationships of Power Through Iron on the Malay Peninsula”

*Kankan Xie (Beijing University) “Harnessing Nationalism: Chinese Education in the Late-Colonial Dutch East Indies 1900-1942”

https://pace.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=9469ac0e-6e5f-4b36-8a9c-acfd00f4b59e

Week 2

Keynote Address Wednesday, April 7th,  8:00pm-9:00pm EDT

Tak-Wing Ngo (University of Macao), “Gray Governance and Shadow Exchanges Across Asian Borders”

No recording at request of speaker.

Panel 2:  Colonial and Post-Colonial Imaginings Thursday, April 8th, 7:00pm-9:00pm EDT

*Christopher Ankersen (New York University) “Lack of Empire and Imperial Lack”

*Taylor Easum (Indiana State University) “A City in the Colonial Margins: Chiang Mai Between Empire and Nation”

*Joan Chang (National Taiwan Normal University) “From Carnal to Post-Colonial Unrest: A Study of Singaporean Novelist Yeng Pway Ngon’s Unrest” 

*Frank Dhont (National Cheng Kung University) “European Competition in the Moluccas”

Week 3

 Keynote Address: Thursday April 15th, 5:00pm- 6:00pm EDT  

Robert J. Antony (Shandong University), “Piracy and Its Discontents in Southeast Asia” 

https://pace.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f570030a-9f06-4838-9c6b-ad0b01739f37

Panel 3: China’s Cultural Diplomacy part I Friday, April 16th, 12:00pm-1:30pm EDT

*Romi Jain (University of British Columbia) “China’s Geointellectual Footprint in Southeast Asia: An Exploratory Study”

*Christina Wu (Sorbonne University) “Between Privilege and Prejudice? Redefining ‘Chineseness in Maritime Southeast Asia’”

*Susy Tukunan (University of Hawaii) “The Development of Overseas Chinese Policies from Qing to BRI”

*Thuy Linh Nguyen (Mount Saint Mary College) “Chinese Coolies on a Coal Frontier of Northern Vietnam: Labor Mobility and Fragmentation (1885-1900)"

https://pace.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=83001087-d83e-482e-8895-ad0c0134ac4e

Week 4

 Panel 4: Contemporary Tensions Thursday, April 22nd, 8:00pm-9:30pmEDT
*Khin Zaw Win (Tampadipa Institute, Myanmar) “China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the Three Economic Corridors”

*Lillian Ngan (University of Southern California) “The Logic of Racial Misrecognition: Are the Hong Kong Protesters Seen as a Vietnamese Threat?”

*Niken Febrina Ernungtyas (Institut Komunikasi dan Bisnis LSPR) “Online Sentiment of Chinese Investment in Indonesia”

https://pace.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=fca7b7e9-e014-4fab-815d-ad13001994b6 

Panel 5: China’s Cultural Diplomacy part II Friday, April 23rd 9:30pm-11:30pm EDT

*James Goh (University of Sydney) “Decolonial Dilemmas and Deferrals: The Hoa in Vietnamese Historiography”

*Hui Wang (Hebei University of Technology) “Singapore Blue Cross: Chinese Charitable Institutes as the Survival Strategies During Japanese Occupation, 1942-1945”

*Aleksius Jemadu (University of Pelita Harapan) “China’s Public Diplomacy in Indonesia: Constraints and Opportunities”

*Zhou Hau Liew (National Taiwan University) “Unstable Returns: Cold War ROC Overseas Chinese Policy and the Mahua Qiaosheng”

 https://pace.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=6d91d9df-b240-473b-a1c1-ad1400432e54