IN CONVERSATION WITH... Our world is being transformed as we speak – at breakneck speed.
One particular change is dramatic yet barely understood.
The West-centric world, in which first Europe and then the United States held sway, is giving way to a new world – to new centres of wealth and power and their rich histories, traditions and languages.
The centre of gravity is visibly shifting from the West to the East, from Occident to Orient.
Asia’s sleeping giants, China and India, are reawakening – with sweeping consequences for everyone, not least US allies.
Australia is especially affected by virtue of its geography, its longstanding alliance with the US, its trade dependence on China and its rapidly growing Indian and Chinese communities.
This is the conversation we need to have.
Professor Wanning Sun
Wanning Sun is a professor of Media and Cultural Anthropology at University of Technology Sydney. She also serves as the Deputy Director of the UTS Australia-China Relations Institute. A fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities since 2016, she is best known in the field of China Studies for her ethnography of rural-to-urban migration and social inequality in contemporary China.
Wanning writes about Chinese diaspora, diasporic Chinese media, and Australia-China relations. She writes a regular column for Crikey.
Dr Allan Patience
Allan Patience is an honorary fellow in political science in the University of Melbourne. He has previously held chairs in universities in Australia and Japan and visiting academic appointments in China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Papua New Guinea. He writes for the daily policy journal Pearls and Irritations and is presently working on a revised edition of his 2018 book on Australian Foreign Policy in Asia.
Dr Pradeep Taneja
Dr Pradeep Taneja is a Senior Lecturer in Asian Politics and international relations at the University of Melbourne.
He is concurrently a Member of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies and an Academic Fellow of the Australia India Institute, both based at the University of Melbourne. He is also a Non-resident International Fellow of Delhi Policy Group, a New Delhi-based think tank.
For those attending in person, this is a catered event. Doors open at 5.45 pm - for drinks, canapes and lively informal conversation.
For those joining online: Starting time 6.30pm AEST, details about joining the event online and a link to join the Zoom room will be provided within 24-hours of the event for convenient access. A recording will be made available after the event to all those who register.
New York 4:30am – Rio 5:30am – London 9:30am – Rome/Geneva 10:30am Johannesburg/Istanbul/Athens/Cairo 11:30 pm Tehran 12:00 pm New Delhi 1:30 pm – Jakarta 3.30 pm – KL/Beijing/Perth 4:30 pm Seoul 5:30 pm – Melbourne 6:30 pm – Auckland 8:30 pm