Please note the event time has been changed to 10:30AM (PT) to 12:00PM (PT).

 

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register for the talk. 

 

This event is presented in partnership with Global:SF and the State of California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development.
 

U.S.-China economic relations have grown increasingly fraught and competitive.  Even amidst intensifying tensions, however, our two major economies remain intertwined.  While keeping alert to national security concerns, the economic strength of the United States will depend on brokering a productive competition with China, the world’s fastest growing economy.  Precipitous decoupling of trade, investment, and human talent flows between the two nations will inflict unnecessary harm to U.S. economic interests -- and those of California.  

Chinese trade and investments into California have grown exponentially over the last decade.  But they have come under increasing pressure following geopolitical and economic tensions between the two nations, particularly in the science and technology sectors.  This session will explore the role of Chinese economic activity in California in the context of the greater US-Chinese relationship. 

 

Craig Allen began his tenure in Washington, DC, as the sixth President of the United States-China Business Council, a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization representing over 200 American companies doing business with China. Ambassador Allen began his government career in 1985 at the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration (ITA) where, from 1986 to 1988, he worked as an international economist in ITA’s China Office. In 1988, Allen transferred to the American Institute in Taiwan, where he served as Director of the American Trade Center in Taipei. He returned to the Department of Commerce for a three-year posting at the US Embassy in Beijing as Commercial Attaché in 1992. In 1995, Allen was assigned to the US Embassy in Tokyo where he was promoted to Deputy Senior Commercial Officer in 1998. Allen became a member of the Senior Foreign Service in 1999. Starting from 2000, he served a two-year tour at the National Center for APEC in Seattle where he worked on the APEC Summits in Brunei, China, and Mexico. In 2002, Allen first served as the Senior Commercial Officer in Beijing where he was later promoted to the Minister Counselor rank of the Senior Foreign Service. After a four-year tour in South Africa, Ambassador Allen became Deputy Assistant Secretary for Asia at the US Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration. He later became Deputy Assistant Secretary for China. Ambassador Allen was sworn in as the United States ambassador to Brunei Darussalam on December 19, 2014 where he served until he transitioned to take up his position as President of the US-China Business Council.
 

David Cheng is the chair and managing partner of Nixon Peabody’s China and Asia-Pacific practice. He is qualified in both the United States and Hong Kong. He focuses on cross-border transactions, litigations and investigations, advising on issues ranging from acquisitions, capital financing (initial public offering), intellectual property protection and disputes to fraud, FCPA and SEC investigations. He has a client portfolio from all over the world, including the United States, Middle East, Europe, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, mainland China and Hong Kong.
 

James Green has worked for over two decades on U.S.-Asia relations. For five years, Green was the Minister Counselor for Trade Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing (2013-2018).  As the senior official in China from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), Green was deeply involved in all aspects of trade negotiations, trade enforcement, and in reducing market access barriers for American entities.  In prior government service, Green worked on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and at the State Department’s China Desk on bilateral affairs. He also served as the China Director of the White House’s National Security Council.  In the private sector, Green was a senior vice president at the global strategy firm founded by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and was the founding government relations manager at the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, Asia’s largest AmCham.  Currently, Green is a Senior Research Fellow at Georgetown University's Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues and hosts a U.S.-China Dialogue Podcast.  He was most recently named as APARC's inaugural China Policy Fellow. 
 

Anja Manuel is Co-Founder and Principal, along with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, a strategic consulting firm that helps US companies navigate international markets. She currently serves on two corporate boards: Overseas Shipping Group, Inc., a NYSE listed energy transportation company, and Ripple Labs Inc., a leading blockchain payments company. Manuel also serves on several advisory boards, including Former Governor Brown’s California Export Council. From 2005-2007, she served as an official at the U.S. Department of State, responsible for South Asia Policy. She is a frequent commentator on foreign policy and technology policy, for TV and radio (NBC/MSNBC, Fox Business, BBC, Bloomberg, Charlie Rose, NPR, etc.) and writes for publications ranging from the New York Times, to the Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and Newsweek, among others. She is the author of the critically acclaimed This Brave New World: India, China and the United States, published by Simon and Schuster in 2016. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Stanford University, Manuel now also lectures and is a Research Affiliate at Stanford University. She is the Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and Aspen Security Forum -- the premier bipartisan forum on foreign policy in the U.S. -- and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

 

 

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This Session is part of a larger conference series titled “The New Economy Conference – California’s Place in the New Global Economy”.   The New Economy Conference will broadcast public programs from April 21-May 25 on a weekly basis, designed to inform and identify the impact of COVID-19 on the economic competitiveness and resilience of the State of California.  Topics addressed will include Challenges and Opportunities Post-COVID in California (4/21); the International Dimension (4/28), Investing in the New Economy and Keeping Businesses in California (5/5); Sustainability and Urbanism (5/12); Navigating Chinese Investment, Trade and Technology (5/19); and Where do We Go from Here? (6/09).

 

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The strategic competition between India and China has turned deadly in the Himalayas, but the stakes may be higher elsewhere, in the Bay of Bengal. While India gradually fortifies its island outposts in the Bay, China is preparing for a long-term naval presence there. Both countries are scrambling to build security cooperation with littoral states, especially Bangladesh and Myanmar. This webinar will explore what makes the Bay of Bengal a particularly important sub-region of the Indo-Pacific. It will consider how China’s growing political and military influence poses security risks for India, and how India and its partners – including the United States and the Quad – can build resilience and deterrence in the Bay of Bengal.  

This event is part of Shorenstein APARC's spring webinar series "The United States in the Biden Era: Views from Asia."

When this webinar is held, Joe Biden’s presidency will be exactly three months old. Enough time to allow for the evaluation of his administration, its policies, and his country by observers around the world, including in Southeast Asia. Ms. Ha will share and interpret the findings of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s latest annual survey of elite Southeast Asian opinions regarding the United States and other nations, which she co-led and co-wrote up with ISEAS colleagues.  Professor Liow will will share some observations on regional views on the Biden administration thus far, focusing on its evolving approach to the region .  Regional impressions and judgments of America now and prior to Biden’s term will also be contrasted, alongside the changing reputations of other countries such as China and Japan.  Policy implications will be drawn as well, especially in light of the unfolding political crisis in Myanmar.

Hoang Thi HA is Fellow and Lead Researcher on Political-Security Affairs at the ASEAN Studies Centre of ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. Her research focuses on political-security issues within ASEAN, including the South China Sea disputes, ASEAN human rights cooperation, ASEAN's relations with the major powers and ASEAN's institutional building. Ms. Hoang worked at the ASEAN Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Viet Nam and the ASEAN Secretariat before joining ISEAS. She holds an MA in International Relations from the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.

Joseph Chinyong Liow is Dean of College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he is also Tan Kah Kee Chair in Comparative and International Politics, and Research Advisor and former Dean at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. He held the inaugural Lee Kuan Yew Chair in Southeast Asia Studies at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, where he was also a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program.

Joseph’s research interests encompass Muslim politics and social movements in Southeast Asia and the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the Asia-Pacific region.

Joseph is the author, co-author, or editor of 14 books, has testified before the U.S. Congress, and has extensive teaching and consultancy experience. He sits on several editorial boards and governing boards of think tanks, and on the Social Science Research Council of Singapore.

 

About the Event:  Poor countries lack infrastructure services: 1.2 billion people have no electricity, and 1 billion live more than 2 kilometers from an all-weather road. In 2015, the World Bank initiated a surge of interest in financing this need when it claimed that rich-country private capital could close the infrastructure services gap, make money, and achieve the sustainable development goals by moving from “billions to trillions” in infrastructure investment in poor countries. This paper assesses and challenges the prevailing gap thinking by introducing an equilibrium framework that distinguishes those poor countries in which the Bank’s three-fold claim is tenable from those where it is not.

 

About the Speaker:  Peter Blair Henry is Dean Emeritus of New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. The youngest person to hold the position, he assumed the Deanship in January 2010 and joined the NYU Stern Faculty as the William R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Finance. Henry joined NYU Stern from Stanford University, where he was the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of International Economics, the John and Cynthia Fry Gunn Faculty Scholar, and Associate Director of the Center for Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Henry currently serves as a director of the boards of Citigroup and Nike, as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and is a member of the advisory boards of Protiviti, a global consulting firm, and Biospring Partners, a growth-stage firm that invests in life sciences technology.  He is also Principal investigator of the PhD Excellence Initiative, a Sloan Foundation-funded fellowship program for minority scholars seeking admission to economic doctoral programs.  In 2015, Henry was awarded the Foreign Policy Association Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the organization.