2012-2017
Inter-Asia School was co-founded by Johnson Chang, Chen Kuan-Hsing, and Gao Shiming, with Chen Kuan-Hsing serving as Chairman. Baik Youngseo, Yoshihiko Ikegami, Sun Ge, Johnson Chang, and Chen Kuan-Hsing served as the standing council. The school has established offices in Taipei (Hsinchu), Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Seoul, Tokyo, Okinawa (Naha), Hong Kong, and Singapore—Malaysia. Gao Shiming serves as the director of the Hangzhou office, with ICAST students Tang Xiaolin, Zhang Jing, and Yuan Anqi as members.
Inter-Asia School is an international institution rooted in civil society, aiming to promote Asian integration within knowledge production. By creating an interactive space for Asian intellectuals, the school seeks to confront current intellectual dilemmas through new forms of knowledge. Advisors include renowned thinkers Paik Nakchung, Itagaki Yuzo, Ashis Nandy, Partha Chatterjee, and Qian Liqun. The school collaborates with scholars, intellectuals, and artists from across China, Japan, Korea, South-east Asia, and India. Activities include digital archiving, research, teaching, holding conferences, exhibitions, translation, and publishing.
Upon its establishment, Inter-Asia School used the 9th Shanghai Biennale as a platform, organizing the World in Transition, Imagination in Flux: Asian Circle of Thought 2012 Shanghai Summit during the exhibition. The forum invited six distinguished Asian thinkers—Paik Nakchung, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Partha Chatterjee, Arasaki Moriteru, Itagaki Yuzo, and Ashis Nandy—to deliver keynote speeches and engage in a week-long dialogue with over forty scholars and intellectuals from across Asia.
Over the past two or three decades, initiatives such as Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Movements, East Asia Critical Journals Conference, and the Western Heavens project have facilitated regional dialogue within Asia at the level of knowledge production, connecting intellectual circles across the continent. Building on this foundation, the forum aims to launch Modern Asian Thought (MAT) to promote deeper co-operation and interaction between Asian intellectuals. By creating new forms of knowledge and ways of thinking, the project seeks to reframe our understanding of ourselves and the world.