Three major political dreams shape our world today: Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’, Putin’s quest for a Russian empire and Xi Jinping’s ‘China dream’. Yet Beijing’s dream becomes Taiwan’s nightmare. Headlines warn: ‘Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow?’ Too often, Western media lack an East Asian perspective. Here we turn our gaze toward China and Taiwan and listen to voices from the ground. We explore how artists and poets from both China and Taiwan reflect on Russia’s war against Ukraine in their works. How do they use social media to debate the art of utopia and anti-utopia? How do they discern in this war visions of their own situation and Taiwan’s future? Which hopes, dreams, fears and nightmares—on both sides of the Taiwan Strait—shape the path toward democracy? Join us for compelling insights into bold art and courageous poetry created at the intersection of freedom of expression and censorship.

Daria Berg, DPhil (Oxford), is the Inaugural Chair Professor of Chinese Culture and Society at the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland, and an Affiliated Professor at the St.Gallen Institute for Management in Asia, Singapore. She recently held a Visiting Fellowship at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and a Taiwan Fellowship at the Academia Sinica, Taipei. She studied Sinology, English Literature and Japanese Studies in Munich, Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo and Kyoto, and received her doctorate in Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford in 1995. Before moving to Switzerland in 2011, she taught Chinese Studies—both classical, traditional and modern Chinese literature and culture—at the Universities of Oxford, Durham and Nottingham, UK. She has published extensively on literature, media and culture in late imperial and contemporary China. Her research has received international recognition, including the Specialist Publication Accolade from the International Convention of Asia Scholars for her monograph Women and the Literary World in Early Modern China, 1580-1700 (London: Routledge, 2013) and the ‘China Information Best Article Prize 2015’. Her current research explores Chinese and Taiwanese visual art, social media, online poetry and literature.

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• DATE: Thursday, April 16, 2026
• TIME: 16:45-18:15
• LOCATION:SIN 1, Department for East Asian Studies/Chinese Studies, Altes AKH, Campus, Spitalgasse 2, Yard 2, Entrance 2.3