Lyushun Shen earned his doctorate in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania. He started his career at the School of Law, University of Maryland before deciding to become a professional diplomat.  He has enjoyed a distinguished career serving Taiwan in its overseas missions in America and Europe, including in Washington D.C., Kansas City, Geneva and Brussels.  Prior to his current appointment he was Taiwan’s representative to the European Union. His publications include:  “The Republic of China’s Perspective on the US Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988” (The Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, 1989), The Issue of US Arms Sales and Peking’s Policy toward Taiwan (Taipei, 1986), “Is Peking’s Claim over Taiwan Internationally Recognized?” Monograph Series of the Asia and World Forum (Taipei, 1984), “The Washington-Peking Controversy over US Arms Sales to Taiwan: Diplomacy of Ambiguity and Escalation” (The Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, 1982), and “The Taiwan Issue in Peking’s Foreign Policy during the 1970’s, A Systematic Review” (The Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, 1981).

In this special event, Vice Foreign Minister Shen will reflect on the century-long relationship between the Republic of China and the United States, and address the future prospects and challenges of this relationship. 

Today nuclear negotiations with North Korea, begun twenty years ago, have returned to their starting point. The Geneva Agreement of 1994 collapsed as a result of North Korea’s clandestine uranium enrichment program, and the PRC-hosted Six Party talks have failed to halt nuclear tests by North Korea. Neither the engagement policy of the Clinton Administration nor the coercive policy of President Bush succeeded in resolving the North Korean nuclear conundrum. The North now claims it should be treated as a nuclear weapons state.

North Korea is currently waging a "peace offensive" to deflect criticism from the international community for its reckless military provocations against South Korea last year. The North may also need dialogue with the international community more than we do, to obtain economic assistance, since starving people would not support their regime and nuclear weapons cannot feed its people. The United States and South Korea agree, however, that under present circumstances, engagement with North Korea would be futile. They maintain that their refusal to resume talks with North Korea is a deliberate and strategic decision. Looking back on real-world experience, North Korea has consistently used provocations as "leverage" to arrive at negotiations on its terms. In most cases, it has gained considerable concessions, using its well-known brinkmanship tactics.

Now that North Korea has confirmed the existence of its uranium enrichment program and announced it will begin constructions of LWRs on its own, neighboring countries are deeply concerned about nuclear safety—not to mention nuclear security—in North Korea. This provides a reason for an unconditional dialogue with North Korea, apparently precisely the situation North sought. In this light, Mr. Yu will review the last twenty years of negotiations with North Korea to draw lessons for dealing with the regime in the future.

Mr. Yu is a former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Korea. He served as Korea's Ambassador to Israel, Japan and Philippines.

As the United States struggles to emerge from recession, India and China's continued robust growth is the subject of much interest and concern. Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Senior Fellow Adam Segal will talk about his new book Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge, analyzing Asia's technological rise, questioning assumptions about the United States inevitable decline, and explaining how America can preserve and improve its position in the global economy by optimizing its strength of moving ideas from the lab to the marketplace.

In his book, Segal argues that the emergence of India and China does not mean the end of American economic and technological power. Instead, the United States should now leverage its many advantages.

Through his research, Segal concludes the United States has an advantage over Asia in the realm of the software of innovation. “In America, your ideas can make you rich. Intellectual property is protected, and individual scientists are able to exploit their breakthroughs for commercial gains,” he writes. “It is time to realize that software in its most expansive sense offers the most opportunities for the United States to ensure its competitive place in the world.” The challenge is “to recover a culture of innovation that was driven underground, overshadowed by sexy credit default swaps and easy spending.”

Speaker

Adam Segal is the Ira A. Lipman senior fellow for counterterrorism and national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An expert on security issues, technology development, and Chinese domestic and foreign policy, Dr. Segal currently leads study groups on cybersecurity and cyber conflict as well as Asian innovation and technological entrepreneurship. His new book Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge (W.W. Norton, 2011) looks at the technological rise of Asia. Dr. Segal is a research associate of the National Asia Research Program and was the project director for a CFR-sponsored independent task force on Chinese military modernization.

Before coming to CFR, Dr. Segal was an arms control analyst for the China Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. There, he wrote about missile defense, nuclear weapons, and Asian security issues. Dr. Segal has been a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and Tsinghua University in Beijing. He has taught at Vassar College and Columbia University. Dr. Segal is the author of Digital Dragon: High-Technology Enterprises in China (Cornell University Press, 2003), as well as several articles and book chapters on Chinese technology policy. His work has recently appeared in the International Herald Tribune, Financial Times, Washington Quarterly, Los Angeles Times, and Foreign Affairs. Dr. Segal currently writes for the CFR blog, “Asia Unbound".

Dr. Segal has a BA and PhD in government from Cornell University, and an MA in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He reads and speaks Chinese.

On January 1, 2010, China and the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) finally, formally launched a China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that encompasses nearly two billion people engaged in trade worth some $200 billion. For China the agreement is a way of securing supplies of raw materials, while the ASEAN countries hope the agreement will open opportunities in China's huge domestic market. When CAFTA  was first signed in November 2002, Beijing promised that Southeast Asia would reap an “early harvest” of its benefits. Yet the Southeast Asian response to CAFTA in the agreement’s first year has been less than enthusiastic, especially in the Philippines and Indonesia. Is CAFTA a bonanza? A blunder? Something in between? Prof. Mendoza will assess the agreement, its implementation, and the implications for China’s role and image in Southeast Asia going forward.

Amado M. Mendoza, Jr. is a leading policy scholar in the Philippines, where he also serves as the treasurer of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESCR) Asia, Inc., an NGO dedicated to the promotion of socio-economic and cultural rights. He is the Philippines’ lead contributor to the soon-to-be-released 2010 Global Integrity Report on governance and corruption. Other subjects of his current research include Asian regional integration; Asian summitry and economic crisis management; Philippine economic diplomacy; and China-Taiwan relations within a regional context. In addition to his academic career, he has a background in journalism, banking, and development.