{"id":19551,"date":"2026-04-19T14:45:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T14:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fondation-pierredubois.ch\/?page_id=19551"},"modified":"2026-07-04T22:12:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T22:12:36","slug":"2026-across-the-bamboo-curtain-economic-political-and-technological-exchanges-between-east-and-west-during-the-cold-war","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.fondation-pierredubois.ch\/fr\/2026-across-the-bamboo-curtain-economic-political-and-technological-exchanges-between-east-and-west-during-the-cold-war\/","title":{"rendered":"2026- Across the Bamboo Curtain: Economic, Political, and Technological Exchanges Between East and West During the Cold War"},"content":{"rendered":"

What did exchange look like between Asian communist states and the capitalist world during the Cold War? The Annual Pierre du Bois Doctoral Workshop 2026 centers on this question through its theme: Across the Bamboo Curtain: Economic, Political, and Technological Exchanges Between East and West During the Cold War.The workshop is organised by LIU Yi and YANG Ziru (Geneva Graduate Institute), Dr. Severyan Dyakonov (SNSF, University of Fribourg), and Karina Khasnulina (Leipzig University).<\/p>\n

While the \u201cBamboo Curtain\u201d has long symbolized division, this workshop highlights the exchanges that persisted across it. Yet, this curtain was never impermeable. While comprehensive U.S.-led economic and military containment sought to restrict communist Asia, firms, diplomats, and intermediaries on both sides sustained economic, technological, and cultural interactions. At the same time, socialist states selectively engaged with foreign knowledge and institutions to advance national development, revealing tensions between ideology and pragmatism.<\/p>\n

The workshop therefore asks: how did economic, political, technological, and cultural exchanges between the capitalist West and communist Asia actually function beneath the surface of Cold War confrontation? More fundamentally, how did such cross-bloc entanglements actively shape\u2014rather than merely reflect\u2014the trajectories of Cold War rivalry and Asian economic development? By for grounding these questions, the workshop highlights the paradoxes of Cold War interdependence: the coexistence of embargo and e change, ideological hostility and pragmatic cooperation, revolutionary nationalism and transnational circulation. It also points to the enduring legacies of these dynamics, which continue to inform contemporary debates on economic security, technological sovereignty, and regional order in the Asia-Pacific.<\/p>\n