U.S.-China Rivalry and the Militarization of the Pacific: Panel Recap
May 1, 2026
Posted in: In the News
Women Cross DMZ joined the Futures Beyond Militarism conference held at the University of Texas Austin, along with our Feminist Peace Initiative partners, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and MADRE. This convening of scholars and activists examined global alternatives to militarism and ways communities envision and enact sustainable and interdependent futures.
WCDMZ Executive Director Cathi Choi joined a panel with scholars Mark Tseng-Putterman and Kyle Kajihiro, moderated by Christine Ahn, WCDMZ Founder & Institute of Policy Studies Fellow on the opening panel, “U.S.-China Rivalry and the Militarization of the Pacific.” Panelists explored the mainstream framing of the U.S. and China as a “rivalry” and how this narrative conceals multiple histories of colonization, connecting U.S. imperialist violence across China, Korea, Hawai’i, the Middle East, and globally. Panelists spoke on recent U.S. marine deployments targeting China and the history of U.S. aggression and expansion across Asia and the Pacific, the ongoing U.S. military control and occupation of Korea, as well as links between anti-Asian violence at home and abroad and the conditions of inclusion in the U.S. empire.
Other panel discussions throughout the conference highlighted the fight for sovereignty as a broader struggle for the right to life and agency, and how intertwined movements are resisting militarism across the Pacific. The conference also included a screening and discussion of the documentary Mālama Mākua on the multi-generational fight to reclaim and restore ancestral land in Hawai’i, which was seized by the US military. We were honored to join this collective and collectively imagine demilitarized futures.