For many years now, U.S.-China relations could reasonably be described as strained. Frequent public and private talks and bilateral communications that were once a normal part of the relationship are challenging with public rebukes and mutual recriminations becoming increasingly frequent. Was this inevitable? How do we explain this development? And are the U.S. and China destined for a cold war?

Professor Jia Qingguo, Visiting Scholar and Payne Distinguished Fellow for the 2022 fall quarter at Stanford, will address these points, present a vision for the bilateral relationship in the foreseeable future, and discuss what can be done to avoid a disastrous confrontation between the two powers.

Featured Speaker

Jia Qingguo is a Professor and former Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Cornell University in 1988. He is a member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. He is vice president of the China American Studies Association, vice president of the China Association for International Studies, and vice president of the China Japanese Studies Association. He has published extensively on US-China relations, relations between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan and Chinese foreign policy.

Discussants

Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009. From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Michael McFaul is Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. Dr. McFaul also is as an International Affairs Analyst for NBC News and a columnist for The Washington Post. He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). 

This event is part of the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series. 

The Payne Lectureship is named for Frank E. Payne and Arthur W. Payne, brothers who gained an appreciation for global problems through their international business operations. Their descendants endowed the annual lecture series at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies to raise public understanding of the complex policy issues facing the global community today and to increase support for informed international cooperation.

The Payne Distinguished Lecturer is chosen for his or her international reputation as a leader, with an emphasis on visionary thinking, a broad, practical grasp of a given field, and the capacity to clearly articulate an important perspective on the global community and its challenges.

The combination of COVID-19 and global uncertainties — from wars, cost-of-living crises, high cross-national public debts, and impending global recession — creates new challenges for affordable access to new medicines around the world. Using insights from his research on price regulation, incentives for innovation, and universal health coverage in global bio-pharmaceutical markets, Chirantan Chatterjee will consider how the future may unravel for affordable access to new medicines in the Global North and South.

Chirantan Chatterjee is an applied microeconomist and a Reader in the Economics of Innovation at the University of Sussex. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Visiting Faculty, IIM Ahmedabad, India. His research interests are in the economics of innovation, pharmaceutical economics, and global health. He has published in top peer-reviewed journals like Management Science, RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Research Policy, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Environmental Economics & Management and Social Science & Medicine among others. His new co-edited book on Covid-19 and Grand Challenges for Health, Innovation and Economy is forthcoming in 2023 with World Scientific. Chatterjee's research has in the past been supported by the NSF during his dissertation work at Carnegie Mellon University from where he obtained his PhD in 2011. His current research is supported by the Wellcome Trust India Alliance & Johns Hopkins Alliance for a Healthy World. Chatterjee has also consulted for the United Nations, World Bank, and the World Health Organization on Covid-19, Universal Health Coverage, and Incentives for Medical Innovation. View more on his personal website at www.chirantanchatterjee.com.

When the U.S. Senate voted to expand NATO into the USSR’s sphere of influence in Europe in 1988, American diplomat-scholar George Kennan called it "the beginning of a new [U.S.-Russia] cold war” and said that Moscow would “gradually react quite adversely." Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 following a joint statement by Moscow and Beijing criticizing the United States. In May 2022, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said U.S.-China relations were on the "brink of a new Cold War.”  What does this mean for Southeast Asians? Are they refusing to choose between the United States and its opponents? How much does the fate of Ukraine matter to Southeast Asians? Do they want peace or justice—to prevent big-power escalation or to reverse imperial expansion? How are they balancing those different views and the contending pressures to side with the United States or Russia+China?

This event is part of APARC’s 2022 Fall webinar series, Asian Perspectives on the US-China Competition.

Richard Heydarian is a Manila-based scholar and columnist serving as a senior lecturer at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman. His academic career has included professorial positions in political and social science at the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, and a visiting fellowship at National Chengchi University. As a columnist, he has written for leading publications such as Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, and The New York Times, and has regularly contributed, for example, to Al Jazeera English, Nikkei Asian Review, South China Morning Post, and The Straits Times. His books include The Indo-Pacific: Trump, China, and the New Struggle for Global Mastery (2019); The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt against Elite Democracy (2017), and Asia's New Battlefield: The USA, China and the Struggle for the Western Pacific (2015).

Huong Le Thu, an Australia-resident analyst of geopolitics in Southeast Asia, is a principal policy fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre, University of Western Australia and a non-resident fellow in CSIS Washington’s Southeast Asia Program. She has worked in universities and think tanks in Australia, Singapore, and Taiwan, and has held visiting positions in the University of Malaya and the ASEAN Secretariat among other places.  Her scholarly writings have appeared in journals including Asia Policy, Asia-Pacific Review, Asian Security, and Foreign Policy, and  she has been quoted in the Financial Times, The Japan Times, The New York Times, The Straits Times, and The Washington Post among other media.  Her degrees are from the National Chengchi University (PhD) and Jagiellonian University in Poland (MA).  She speaks five languages and has published in four of them.

This event is co-sponsored by the Hoover Project on China’s Global Sharp Power. 

If you cannot join in person but would like to attend virtually, please join us via Zoom meeting.
Meeting ID: 953 0045 6111
Password: 120122

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China over 70 years ago, five paramount leaders have shaped the fates and fortunes of the nation and the ruling Chinese Communist Party: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. Drawing on his recent book, China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now, in this lecture Professor David Shambaugh will explore the differing backgrounds, contrasting leadership styles, and impact of each paramount leader.

Speaker

David Shambaugh is the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science & International Affairs, and Director of the China Policy Program, Elliott School of International Affairs, at George Washington University. Professor Shambaugh joined the George Washington faculty after serving as Reader in Chinese Politics at the University of London’s SOAS and as editor of The China Quarterly. As an author, Professor Shambaugh has published 35 books, including most recently International Relations of Asia (3rd ed., 2022), China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now (2021), Where Great Powers Meet: America & China in Southeast Asia (2021), and China & the World (2020).

Chair

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science and a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She directs the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and is the Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University.

Discussant 

Glenn Tiffert is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China. He co-chairs the Hoover project on China’s Global Sharp Power and works closely with government and civil society partners to document and build resilience against authoritarian interference with democratic institutions. Most recently, he co-authored and edited Global Engagement: Rethinking Risk in the Research Enterprise (2020).