Asia Foundation Co-Hosts Panel on the Korean Peninsula at World Peace Forum in Beijing
On July 14-15, the seventh World Peace Forum (WPF) was held in Beijing. The theme of this year’s forum was “Constructing a Security Community: Equality, Equity, and Justice.” Yang Jiechi, a Politburo member for the Central Committee of the Communist Party and director of the the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission, gave the keynote speech at the opening ceremony. Foreign diplomats from over 40 embassies attended the opening ceremony. As China’s only high level nongovernmental international security forum, this year’s forum attracted around 270 participants, including several former foreign leaders and 70 scholars from 23 countries, all of whom convened to discuss key issues influencing international and regional security and cooperation. Topics of this year’s forum included world security trends, security cooperation in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region, the Korean Peninsula, Russia’s relationship with the West, U.S.-China relations, and the global trade order.
For the third time, The Asia Foundation’s China office co-hosted a panel with Tsinghua University titled ” Peace on the Korean Peninsula.” Moderated by Professor Yuan Peng, vice president of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, the panel was joined by four prestigious panelists, including Kathleen Stephens, the former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea and a trustee of The Asia Foundation; Han Sung Joo, former foreign minister of the Republic of Korea; Hitoshi Tanaka, former deputy minister of Foreign Affairs for Japan; and Professor Zhu Chenghu of the Academic Department of Strategic Studies, National Defense University of China. The panel analyzed the driving force behind the recent developments on the Korean Peninsula, the challenges to denuclearization and lasting peace in the region and the expected roles of the various parties concerned in the peace process.
The WPF is organized by Tsinghua University together with Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs. Founded in 2012, the forum has welcomed more than 1000 international participants over the past six annual meetings, including former national leaders, think tank leaders, and foreign ambassadors. The Foundation, with its broad and in-depth networks in Asia, and rich expertise on regional security and U.S.-China relations, has co-hosted two panels with Tsinghua University prior to this year’s panel, focusing on Afghanistan’s stability and development (2015) and the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
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