Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Zhong Houtao on China’s New Cross-Strait Strategy (Part 1)

"What is needed now is the right opportunity—if the United States produces such an opportune moment, the overall dynamics could shift fundamentally."

Zhong Houtao (钟厚涛) has a notably unorthodox background. Trained in Chinese literature, his doctoral research explored how the classic Song-dynasty poetics treatise, Canglang’s Remarks on Poetry (沧浪诗话), has been interpreted and culturally reframed within Anglophone scholarship. After completing his PhD in 2011, he made a remarkable shift in focus, joining the prestigious Institute of Taiwan Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), where he began analysing cross-Strait relations and political developments in the Republic of China (ROC). How such a transition was possible is not readily evident. He is now an Associate Professor at the University of International Relations in Beijing, known for its close ties with China’s Ministry of State Security. This may account for his apparent reluctance or inability to engage directly with foreign China watchers such as myself, particularly on so sensitive a subject as Taiwan.

I found his book talk on cross-Strait relations (below) …