Event Date: November 13, 2019 - 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Location: FSS 4004, FSS Building, 120 University Private, Ottawa

Presented by CIPS and the Asian Studies Network (ASN)

Description: The Jan. 11, 2020, elections will mark a pivotal moment in Taiwan’s democratic history, pitting Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-democracy camp against the Kuomintang’s Han Kuo-yu, a populist and Beijing’s favorite whose campaign has focused on money-making and closer ties with China. As Taiwanese decide on the kind of country they want for themselves, Beijing is expected to deploy its full apparatus of propaganda and “sharp power” to influence the outcome of the elections and shape the environment in its favor. In his talk, the Taipei-based security analyst J. Michael Cole discusses the parties’ strategies, the stakes, the potential impact on Taiwan’s future engagement with democratic partners, and the various tools the Chinese Communist Party is expected to utilize to interfere in Taiwan’s democratic processes.

J. Michael Cole is a Taipei-based senior fellow with the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington, D.C., the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa and the Taiwan Studies Programme at the University of Nottingham, UK, as well as a research associate with the French Center for Research on Contemporary China and chief editor of Taiwan Sentinel. He is a consultant for various governments as well as the defense industry. Prior to relocating to Taiwan in 2005, he was an analyst with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in Ottawa. He has a M.A. in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada, the CX-77 diploma in peacekeeping from the Lester B. Pearson International Peacekeeping Center and the International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance from the Center for International Health and Cooperation/Fordham University. From 2014-2016, he worked at the Thinking Taiwan Foundation, a think tank created by Tsai Ing-wen, currently the president of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Cole has authored the sections on Taiwan for the 2013 and 2018 IISS Military Balance and the report “The Hard Edge of Sharp Power: Understanding China’s Influence Operations Abroad,” published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in October 2018. He is the author of five book on Taiwan. His latest, The End of the Illusion: Cross- Strait Relations Since 2016, was published in Chinese in July 2019; the English-language version will be released by Routledge in March 2020. He is also co-editor, with Dr. Hsu Szu-chien, of the book Insidious Power: How China Undermines Democracies Worldwide, to be published in late 2019 or early 2020.