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Co-sponsored by the Stanford Center at Peking University.
In honor of its release, contributors Mary Bullock, Thomas Fingar, and David M. Lampton will join editor Anne Thurston for a panel discussion of their volume Engaging China: Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations (Columbia University Press, 2021).
Recent years have seen the U.S.-China relationship rapidly deteriorate. Engaging China brings together leading China specialists—ranging from academics to NGO leaders to former government officials—to analyze the past, present, and future of U.S.-China relations. Bullock, Fingar, Lampton, and Thurston will reflect upon the complex and multifaceted nature of American engagement with China since the waning days of Mao’s rule. What initially motivated U.S.’ rapprochement with China? Until recent years, what logic and processes have underpinned the U.S. foreign policy posture towards China? What were the gains and the missteps made during five decades of America’s engagement policy toward China? What is the significance of our rapidly deteriorating bilateral relations today? Speakers will tackle these questions and more at this critical time when tensions between the U.S. and China continue to intensify.
For more information about Engaging China or to purchase a copy, please click here.
Mary Bullock, president emerita of Agnes Scott College, is an educator and scholar of U.S. – China relations. She served as the founding executive vice-chancellor of Duke Kunshan University from 2012-2015. Previous positions include distinguished visiting professor at Emory University, director of the Asia Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and director of the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People’s Republic of China. She is vice-chair of the Asia Foundation, a trustee of the Henry Luce Foundation, and a member of the Schwarzman Academic Advisory Committee and the Council on Foreign Relations. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Chinese history from Stanford University. Her most recent publications include
The Oil Prince’s Legacy: Rockefeller Philanthropy in China (2011) and, as co-editor,
Medical Transitions in Twentieth Century China (2014).
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.
Fingar's most recent books are The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform, editor (Stanford, 2016), Uneasy Partnerships: China and Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, 2017), and Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Jean Oi (Stanford, 2020).
David M. Lampton is Senior Fellow at the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute and Professor Emeritus at Johns Hopkins--SAIS. Immediately prior to his current post he was Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at Stanford University’s Asia-Pacific Research Center from 2019-2020. For more than two decades prior to that he was Hyman Professor and Director of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Lampton is former Chairman of the The Asia Foundation, former President of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, and former Dean of Faculty at SAIS. Among many written works, academic and popular, his most recent book (with Selina Ho and Cheng-Chwee Kuik) is
Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia (University of California Press, 2020). He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University in political science where, as an undergraduate student, he was a firefighter. Lampton has an honorary doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Far Eastern Studies. He is a Life Trustee on the Board of Trustees of Colorado College and was in the US Army Reserve in the enlisted and commissioned ranks.
Anne Thurston is the director of the Grassroots China Initiative, where she works with local NGOs in China. Thurston is a former associate professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, assistant professor at Fordham University, and was a China staff member at the Social Science Research Council. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Thurston is also a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations. Thurston is the author of numerous publications, including
The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet (2015), and
Muddling Toward Democracy: Political Change in Grass Roots China (1998). She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
