NCUSCR Events

Gary Liu, CEO of the South China Morning Post since January 2017, discussed the challenges in leading what has been the foremost English-language publication in Hong Kong for over a century.

Gary Liu became CEO of the South China Morning Post in January 2017. Headquartered in Hong Kong, SCMP is Asia’s leading magazine publisher, with a portfolio of lifestyle and fashion titles including Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Esquire, Harper’s BAZAAR and The Peak, and is home to cpjobs.com. Mr. Liu was previously CEO of Digg, spearheading the New York startup’s transformation from aggregator to a data-driven news platform. Before that, Mr. Liu was head of Spotify Labs, where he led emerging technologies and business strategies for Spotify’s global markets.

Born in the United States, Mr. Liu grew up in Taiwan and New Zealand before returning to the American Northeast where he lived and worked for 20 years. Mr. Liu is an economics graduate of Harvard University. He currently lives in Hong Kong.

The recent proposal to remove presidential term limits in China has prompted questions about the country’s future development, and the historical legacy of China’s past authoritarian leaders seems relevant once again. How should we understand the current direction of China’s political culture? In a newly revised and updated book, modern China historians Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Maura Cunningham review the key historical trends that have shaped China’s development in the 21st century. From Confucian thought to U.S.-China relations under Trump and Xi, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, third edition, provides essential knowledge for understanding the world’s emerging superpower. Dr. Cunningham and Dr. Wasserstrom discussed their book and how to understand contemporary China in historical perspective with the National Committee on March 27, 2018. 

Maura Elizabeth Cunningham is a writer and historian of modern China. She is a graduate of Saint Joseph’s University (B.A.), Yale University (M.A.), the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies (graduate certificate), and the University of California, Irvine (Ph.D.), as well as of Chinese language programs in Beijing and Hangzhou. Dr. Cunningham’s dissertation was a social and cultural history of child welfare in 20th-century Shanghai; she is currently working on a book about children’s cartoonist Zhang Leping.

In 2016, she moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to become the digital media manager at the Association for Asian Studies. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. 

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine, where he edits the Journal of Asian Studies; he also holds courtesy affiliations in the Law School and the Literary Journalism Program. Dr. Wasserstrom holds a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz, a master’s from Harvard, and a doctorate from Berkeley, and has written five books and edited or coedited several others. His most recent books as author and editor include, Eight Juxtapositions: China through Imperfect Analogies from Mark Twain to Manchukuoand the Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China. He was a co-founder of The China Beat blog (2008-2012) and is now an academic editor for the LARB’s China Channel.  

With the Sunflower Movement of 2014, Taiwanese youth became a significant factor in Taiwan’s politics. In the aftermath of the protests, some assume that young Taiwanese uniformly believe that Taiwan should keep its distance from the Chinese mainland. In fact, however, many have moved to mainland metropolises seeking employment. What does Taiwan’s younger generation really think about China, democracy, and independence vs. unification? The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) recently conducted a survey to assess attitudes towards these critical issues. On March 26, 2018, TFD President Szu-chien Hsu shared their findings and discussed how young Taiwanese are shaping the island’s political future. 

Dr. Szu-chien Hsu is president of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD), as well as an associate research fellow at the Institute of Political Science of Academia Sinica in Taipei and director of the Center for Contemporary China at National Tsinghua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan. 

For more information on the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ events, visit us at https://www.ncuscr.org/events.

Four decades of non-stop economic growth has encouraged the view that China’s ruling elite comprises men of supernatural technocratic ability who can successfully navigate any political, social, or economic challenge. However, according to Professor Carl Minzner, China’s glossy façade obscures mounting social pressures and the increasing brittleness of the regime’s power. In a new book, End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival is Undermining its Rise, Fordham University law professor and China expert Carl Minzner examines the historical origins and contemporary implications of Beijing’s turn to repression. From increasing debt to labor unrest, Professor Minzner details how today’s challenges to continued stability are rooted in a process of the slow jettisoning of reforms beginning in the 1990s. Professor Minzner joined us on March 14, 2018, for a discussion of his book and the future of reform in China.

Carl Minzner is an expert in Chinese law and governance. He has written extensively on these topics in both academic journals and the popular press, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor. Professor Minzner’s academic works include “China After the Reform Era” (Journal of Democracy, 2015), “The Rise and Fall of Chinese Legal Education” (Fordham International Law Journal, 2013), and “China’s Turn Against Law” (American Journal of Comparative Law, 2011).

Prior to joining Fordham in 2011, Professor Minzner was associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. He previously served as senior counsel for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Yale-China Association legal education fellow at the Northwest Institute of Politics and Law in Xi’an. He also worked as an associate at McCutchen & Doyle (Palo Alto, CA) and clerked for Judge Raymond Clevenger of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

For more information on the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ events, visit us at www.ncuscr.org/events.

What is the size of China’s gender imbalance? Equal to the combined populations of New York State and Pennsylvania combined (approximately 34 million)! The one-child policy is widely seen as the cause of the skewed gender ratio; less studied than the men who are unable to find spouses are the millions of urban, educated women who may also go unwed. Gender roles and expectations have not kept pace with the country’s economic and social transformations of recent decades, and such women, who postpone or forgo marriage for the sake of their careers, are commonly referred to as “leftover women.” In a new book, Roseann Lake explores the challenges and pressures these women face, as well as the ways in which they are determining China’s future. Ms. Lake joined the National Committee on March 5, 2018 for a discussion of her book and the world of work, dating, and matrimony experienced by China’s only daughters. 

Roseann Lake is now The Economist's Cuba correspondent. She was previously based in Beijing, where she spent five years working as a television and print reporter. Her China coverage has appeared in Foreign Policy, Time, The Atlantic, Salon and Vice, among other publications. She divides her time between New York City and Havana. 

For more information on the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ events, visit us at https://www.ncuscr.org/events.

On Sunday, February 25, 2018, the world learned that the Chinese Constitution would be amended to allow the president and vice president to stay in office beyond two terms (ten years) – the limit established in the 1982 constitutional revision. On Thursday, March 1, President Trump announced that the United States would impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports. Although the tariffs apply to products from all over the world, many assume that they are aimed at China.

The National Committee invited the Honorable Jeffrey A. Bader to discuss the implications of these and other recent developments in China and the United States, in a teleconference moderated by NCUSCR President Steve Orlins on March 6, 2018.

Jeffrey Bader is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center and the first director of the Center (2005-2009). From 2009 until 2011, Ambassador Bader was special assistant to the president of the United States for national security affairs at the National Security Council. In that capacity, he was the principal advisor to President Obama on Asia.

During his 30-year career with the U.S. government, Amb. Bader focused primarily on U.S.-China relations at the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Office of the United States Trade Representative. In 2001, as assistant U.S. trade representative, he led the United States delegation in completing negotiations on the accession of China and Taiwan into the World Trade Organization. As a foreign service officer, he served in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Namibia, Zambia, Congo, and the United States Mission to the United Nations. During the 1990s, he was deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia; director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council; and director of the State Department’s Office of Chinese Affairs. He served as U.S. ambassador to Namibia from 1999 to 2001.

Amb. Bader is the author of Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy, published in 2012 by Brookings Institution Press. He is president and sole proprietor of Jeffrey Bader LLC, which provides assistance to companies with interests in Asia, and a member of the National Committee’s board of directors. He received his bachelor’s degree from Yale University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in European history from Columbia University.

Much has been written about the dynamics that have traditionally defined U.S.-China relations. But as China adopts a more activist foreign policy and increasingly seeks investment opportunities around the world, new theatres of cooperation and contention are coming into play. In a series of three edited volumes, David Denoon explores the interests and policies of the United States and China in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and South America respectively. In this trilogy, Professor Denoon examines points of both mutual and competing interests in the U.S. and China’s economic and security relations with each region.

On February 20, 2018, the National Committee held a discussion with Dr. Denoon that touched on all three volumes in the series, with Dr. Denoon comparing and contrasting the ways in which Sino-American strategic competition is unfolding in each region, as well as their implications for the broader U.S.-China relationship. 

David Denoon is a professor of politics and economics at New York University and director of the NYU Center on U.S.-China Relations. He has served in the federal government in three positions: program economist for USAID in Jakarta, vice president of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, and deputy assistant secretary of defense.

Professor Denoon is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, the U.S. Committee on Security Cooperation in Asia and the Pacific (USSCAP), the Asia Society, the Korea Society, the U.S.-Indonesia Society, and is chairman of the New York University Asia Policy Seminar. He is also chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board of Great Decisions.

He is the author and editor of ten books, including Real Reciprocity - Balancing U.S. Economic and Security Policy in the Pacific Basin, and The Economic and Strategic Rise of China and India.

Professor Denoon holds a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.P.A. from Princeton University, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Between ballooning debt to GDP ratios, overinvestment in the property market, and industrial overcapacity, the uneven structure of China’s economic growth provides plenty of reasons for concern. Yet so far, China’s unique blend of state-led and laissez-faire capitalism has proved remarkably strong, defying numerous predictions of imminent economic catastrophe. In a new book, Will China’s Economy Collapse? New York University Adjunct Professor Ann Lee addresses key questions that China watchers and economists have been asking about the longevity of China’s unprecedented economic development and its future prospects.

In her book, Professor Lee examines why China’s economy might be more resilient than commonly presumed, and provides a careful analysis of its strengths and weaknesses. She also addresses the implications for other capitalist societies around the world and offers advice to policy makers about what changes must occur to ensure continued global stability and prosperity. Professor Lee discussed her book, China’s economic outlook, and the future of global capitalism in New York on February 7, 2018, with National Committee President Stephen Orlins.

 Ann Lee is an internationally recognized authority on China’s economic relations and the CEO of Coterie, a new technology investment consortium. She is also a former visiting professor at Peking University and currently an adjunct professor at New York University where she teaches macroeconomics and financial derivatives. She consults with policymakers from Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the U.S. about U.S.-China relations, international finance and trade, and China’s political economy.

In addition to numerous television and radio appearances, Dr. Lee’s op-eds have appeared in major publications in the United States and Asia.

 A former investment banker in high yield bonds and technology stocks, as well as a partner and credit derivatives trader in two multi-billion dollar hedge fund firms, she is also the author of the book What the U.S. Can Learn from China, an award winning international bestseller. She is an active member of the Authors Guild and the Pen America Society.

Dr. Lee attended U.C. Berkeley, Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs, and Harvard Business School.

On May 12, 2008, a massive earthquake rocked central Sichuan, killing 87,000 people and leaving five million homeless in the second worst natural disaster in China’s modern history (the first was the Tangshan earthquake of 1976). As news of the event spread, hundreds of thousands of volunteers poured into Sichuan from all over China to help wherever they were needed. Many cooked, cleaned, and cared for survivors, but the sudden explosion of civic engagement also led to more politically oriented activities, as the magnitude of the tragedy forced an emotional confrontation with the deeper causes of the destruction beyond the violence of the quake itself.

In a new book The Politics of Compassion: The Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China, sociologist and China expert Bin Xu examines the ways in which civic engagement unfolded in the aftermath of the earthquake, and what these developments reveal about China’s evolving civil society.

Drawing on extensive interviews and documentary research, Dr. Xu challenges many of the popular narratives about the national outpouring of compassion, and illustrates the tension between volunteering and activism. Dr. Xu joined the National Committee on January 31, 2018, for a discussion of his book and China’s civil society with NCUSCR Vice President Jan Berris.

 Bin Xu is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Emory University. His research interests lie at the intersection of politics and culture. He is currently writing a book on the collective memory of China’s “educated youth” (zhiqing) generation—the 17 million Chinese youth sent down to the countryside in the 1960s and 1970s. His research has appeared in leading sociology and China studies journals, including Theory & Society, Sociological Theory, Social Problems, Social Psychology Quarterly, China Quarterly, and The China Journal.  Dr. Xu is a fellow in the National Committee’s Public Intellectuals Program.

After the United States and China established diplomatic relations in 1979, those who had left China around 1949 were able to visit family members who had remained in China. Three decades of separation gave rise to many unanswered questions on both sides. One such question inspired young journalist Jennifer Lin: “Do you have any idea what happened to us?” she was asked at a family reunion in Shanghai in 1979. She then embarked on a 30-year quest to uncover her family history. The daughter of a Chinese father and a Catholic, Italian-American mother, Ms. Lin explored her family’s Anglican past in Shanghai, and its experiences as Chinese Christians under communist rule. The resulting book, Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family, is an account of China’s chaotic modern history through the eyes of a single family whose western education, charismatic leadership, and Christian faith made it targets during the Cultural Revolution. 

Ms. Lin joined the National Committee on January 24, 2018 in New York, for a discussion of her book, her family, and the recent history of Christianity in China with National Committee Senior Director for Education Programs Margot Landman.

Jennifer Lin is an award-winning journalist and former reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer; she served as the paper’s New York financial correspondent, Washington foreign affairs reporter, and Asia bureau chief in Beijing.

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.