Dr Pichamon Yeophantong, Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Development, Director, Responsible Business Lab, UNSW Canberra at the Defence Force Academy. 

The unprecedented disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has not only spotlighted the dependency of global supply chains on China, but is also generating debate over the sustainability of Chinese overseas investment—and, more broadly, Beijing's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This presentation will discuss the sociopolitical and economic implications of the COVID-19 crisis for Chinese investment projects abroad, focusing on mainland Southeast Asia. It will also touch on the reputational impacts that the pandemic is having on China’s economic influence and the longer-term viability of the BRI.

Dr Pichamon Yeophantong is a China specialist, with expertise on Chinese foreign policy and the political economy of sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific. She leads the Environmental Justice and Human Rights Project, and the Responsible Business Lab at HASS. She is also a research associate at, inter alia, the Global Economic Governance Programme (University College, Oxford), the Institute of Asian and Pacific Studies (University of Nottingham Ningbo), and the UNSW Global Water Institute. Pichamon currently serves on the International Studies Association's Committee on the Status of Engagement with the Global South. In 2018, Pichamon was awarded the CHASS Australia 'Future Leader' Prize by the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and was named a Chief Investigator on a project on stopping sexual harassment in Southeast Asian factories with CARE Australia and the Gendered Violence Research Network.

This event is online only. After registering, on Wednesday 22 April you will receive a follow-up confirmation email containing further details on how to join the webinar. (If you believe you have not received an email by early afternoon please check your junk folder!) The event will start at 6pm AEST (Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne time, UTC+10).