Radhika Desai and I became involved with the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE) in 2008 at their Paris conference. WAPE was an initiative of Professor Cheng Enfu of the Marxism section of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), and his colleagues both in China and internationally. It played a critical role in the evolving theoretical collaboration between Chinese, Western and global South Scholars, and continues to do so.
The Hanoi conference was of special significance not only because of the affinity between the two Communist countries but because at the time, there was a wave of anti-Chinese activity in Vietnam, assiduously cultivated as always by US agencies. The conference was the occasion for contact and dialogue at high level between Communists of the two countries, which we were privileged to be present at.
This post contains the programme of the conferences, my presentation and Radhika’s abstract.