Until the Cairo Conference of November 1943, the Chinese Communist Party was committed to support the people of Taiwan to secure independence from Japan. Now, it sees Taiwan as integral to its national security, as part of the First Island Chain. In between, after initially ignoring Taiwan, it prepared the PLA to take over the island as the Chinese Civil War reached its endgame. It only started to introduce the rhetoric to describe Taiwan as a sacred territory of China after the Korean War started. Professor Tsang will focus on tracing and explaining the transformation of the CCP’s approach to Taiwan from its inception to the present.   The threat China poses for Taiwan continues to intensify as the People's Republic becomes increasingly self-confident and assertive. Amid renewed tensions in the Taiwan Strait and a geopolitical context that seems to favour Beijing, China has increased its military signalling while intensifying its efforts to corrode and undermine Taiwan's democratic institutions by means of isolation, co-optation, espionage, political/psychological warfare and disinformation. In his talk, Mr. Cole assesses the strategies, aims, and impact of this intensifying united front campaign against Taiwan and Taipei's response.

• Steve Tsang is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the China Institute, SOAS University of London. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Chatham House, an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College at Oxford, and a Guest Professor at Tongji University in Shanghai. He regularly contributes to public debates on different aspects of issues related to the politics, history, foreign policy, security, and development of the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and East Asia more generally.

• J. Michael Cole (M.A. War Studies, RMC) is a Taipei-based senior fellow with the China Policy Institute and Taiwan Studies Programme, University of Nottingham, UK, research associate with the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China and chief editor of Taiwan Sentinel.

• André Laliberté, Research Chair on Taiwan Studies and Full Professor at the School of Political Studies, will be moderating the session.