Facing international upheaval due to COVID-19, and an increasingly hostile West, some speculate that China may experience a semi-Stalinist turn inward, and widespread technological and economic decoupling from the rest of the world. What is the truth behind these speculations, what is the internal debate within China, and what might this mean for China and indeed for the international community?

This panel will explore these questions and marks the launch of the China Foresight Forum, a new platform for expert discussion and novel insights on China, hosted by LSE IDEAS.

Yu Jie is a Senior Research Fellow on China in the Asia-Pacific Programme, Chatham House. She isShe is the former head of China Foresight at LSE IDEAS and remains an Associate at LSE IDEAS.

George Magnus is a research associate at Oxford University's China Centre and at SOAS, and, over 2 decades, a former Chief Economist at UBS. He is the author of Red Flags: Why Xi's China is in Jeopardy (Yale University Press, 2019).

Geoffrey Yu was formerly Chief Investment Office for UBS Wealth Management UK. Previously, Geoffrey spent a decade as a currency strategist with UBS in London and Zurich. As an established analyst and commentator on foreign exchange markets and developments in China, he is widely quoted in the financial press and regularly serves as a guest host on Bloomberg Television and CNBC. Brought up in the UK and China, Geoffrey holds a double BA from Carleton College in the USA and an MSc in Finance from LSE.

Michael Cox is Director of LSE IDEAS and Emeritus Professor of International Relations at LSE.

Event hashtag: #LSEChina

LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE's foreign policy think tank. We connect academic knowledge of diplomacy and strategy with the people who use it.