All agree that US-China relations are at their lowest point in half a century, but there is no agreement as to why or what can be done to stabilize ties, let alone return to an earlier period of amity. Drawing on their recent travels within the US, Europe, and Asia, Blanchette and Kennedy will show how the dynamics of the relationship vary depending on where one stands.
Speaker:
Mr Jude Blanchette, Freeman Chair in China Studies, Center for Strategic & International Studies
Jude Blanchette holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Previously, he was engagement director at the Conference Board’s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing, where he researched China’s political environment with a focus on the workings of the Communist Party of China and its impact on foreign companies and investors. Prior to working at the Conference Board, Blanchette was the assistant director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. Blanchette has written for a range of publications, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal, War on the Rocks, the Financial Times, and the Washington Post. His book, China’s New Red Guards: The Return of Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong, was published by Oxford University Press in 2019. Blanchette is a public intellectual fellow at the National Committee on United States-China Relations and serves on the board of the American Mandarin Society. He holds an MA in modern Chinese studies from the University of Oxford and a BA in economics from Loyola University in Maryland.
Dr Scott Kennedy, Senior Adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics, Center for Strategic & International Studies
Scott Kennedy is senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). A leading authority on Chinese economic policy, Kennedy has been traveling to China for over 30 years. His specific areas of expertise include industrial policy, technology innovation, business lobbying, U.S.-China commercial relations, and global governance. He is the editor of China’s Uneven High-Tech Drive: Implications for the United States (CSIS, February 2020) and (with Jude Blanchette) Chinese State Capitalism: Diagnosis and Prognosis (CSIS, October 2021) and the author of The State and the State of the Art on Philanthropy in China (Voluntas, August 2019), China’s Risky Drive into New-Energy Vehicles (CSIS, November 2018), The Fat Tech Dragon: Benchmarking China’s Innovation Drive (CSIS, August 2017), and The Business of Lobbying in China (Harvard University Press, 2005). He has edited three books, including Global Governance and China: The Dragon’s Learning Curve (Routledge, 2018). His articles have appeared in a wide array of policy, popular, and academic venues, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and China Quarterly. He is currently finishing a report, Beyond Decoupling: Maintaining America’s Hi-Tech Advantages over China (CSIS, forthcoming spring 2023). From 2000 to 2014, Kennedy was a professor at Indiana University (IU), where he established the Research Center for Chinese Politics & Business and was the founding academic director of IU’s China Office. Kennedy received his PhD in political science from George Washington University, his MA in China studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and his BA from the University of Virginia.
Host: Prof Cameron Campbell, Associate Dean, School of Humanities and Social Science, HKUST