NCUSCR Events

Kevin Rudd MP, former Australian Prime Minister and architect of Australia’s regional policies discusses China’s new leaders, evolving issues in the Asia-Pacific region and their relevance to the U.S.-China relationship at a program hosted by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and moderated by National Committee President Stephen Orlins in New York on December 18, 2012.



A fluent Mandarin speaker with an extensive history of interaction with China, Mr. Rudd has served as Australia’s Prime Minister (2007-2010), Foreign Minister (2010-2012), Member of Parliament (1998 to present) and Labor Party Leader (2006-2010). His leadership of Australia’s successful response during the Global Financial Crisis left Australia as the only major economy not to go into recession.  Mr. Rudd, recognized as one of the founders of the G-20, helped bring the United States into the East Asia Summit.



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

Despite its impressive size and population, economic vitality, and drive to upgrade its military capabilities, China remains a vulnerable nation surrounded by powerful rivals and potential foes. InChina's Search for Security, authors Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell argue that the key to understanding China’s foreign policy is to grasp these geostrategic challenges, which persist even as the country comes to dominate its neighbors. At a Jones Day program on Thursday, December 6, the authors discussed their new book, analyzing China’s security concerns, and illuminating the issues driving Chinese policy.

On April 2, Dr. Stephen R. Platt, a 2008-2010 fellow in the National Committee's Public Intellectuals Program, discussed his latest book,Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War, at the Luce Foundation office in New York. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom is a military history of the nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, one of the largest civil wars in history. This comprehensive account sets the rebellion in a global context that weaves together the story of the domestic conflict between the Qing dynasty and the Taiping rebels with the larger forces of Chinese-foreign relations that led ultimately to Britain's crucial intervention in the war.

On November 30, 2011, Harvard University professor emeritus Dr. Ezra F. Vogel discussed his landmark biography, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, at the New York office of Covington & Burling. The event was hosted by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and was moderated by National Committee President Stephen Orlins.

On April 10, 2012, Chinese authorities announced that Politburo member Bo Xilai had been removed from both the Politburo and the Central Committee and that his wife Gu Kailai was implicated in the murder of a British national in Chongqing last fall. Three days later Dr. Cheng Li, America's leading scholar of elite politics in China and director of research and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's John L. Thornton China Center, discussed Bo Xilai's fall and its implications for China's political transitions taking place this autumn in a conference call moderated by Steve Orlins, president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

Peter Hessler, described by the Wall Street Journal as one of the Western worlds most thoughtful writers on modern China, discusses his new book Country Driving: A Journey Through China From Farm to Factory, on the morning of its hardcover release, Tuesday, February 9th 2010.

Dr. Ashley Esarey, An Wang Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, and Dr. Yang Guobin, associate professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College, Columbia University, speak about the internet and Chinese society and the Green Dam software controversy on June 11, 2009 in New York. Each discuss ongoing changes in internet restrictions and the predicted ramifications of increased government control.

Their commentary is followed by a panel discussion moderated by National Committee President Stephen Orlins and audience Q&A.

National Committee Vice Chairman Dr. Henry A. Kissinger discusses his new book, On China, in a conversation with National Committee on U.S.-China Relations President Stephen Orlins on July 18 in New York

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.