8th Annual Jamestown China Defense and Security Conference
Thursday, October 11
9:00 am – 4:30 pm
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Root Conference Room
1779 Massachusetts Ave NW,
Washington, DC 20036
Watch the Video:
*Videos of the 1st and 4th Panels will be released next week.
About the Event
The Jamestown Foundation is proud to announce that its Eighth Annual China Defense and Security Conference, held Thursday, October 11th, was a success. In the past year, the landscape of China-US relations has changed dramatically. The security challenges posed by the influence of a resurgent China are more numerous, and more far-reaching, than ever.
This conference explored the implications of this new era with some of the world’s leading authorities on PRC influence, military and otherwise.
Confirmed Speakers
Randall G. Schriver
Mr. Randall Schriver is the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs. Mr. Schriver was appointed as Assistant Secretary of Defense by President Donald Trump on 8 January 2018.
Prior to his confirmation, Mr. Schriver was one of five founding partners of Armitage International LLC, a consulting firm that specializes in international business development and strategies. He was also CEO and President of the Project 2049 Institute, a non-profit research organization dedicated to the study of security trend lines in Asia.
Previously, Mr. Schriver served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He was responsible for China, Taiwan, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. From 2001 to 2003, he served as Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of State. From 1994 to 1998, he worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, including as the senior official responsible for the day-to-day management of U.S. bilateral relations with the People’s Liberation Army and the bilateral security and military relationships with Taiwan.
Prior to his civilian service, he served as an active duty Navy Intelligence Officer from 1989 to 1991, including a deployment in support of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. After active duty, he served in the Navy Reserves for nine years, including as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an attaché at U.S. Embassy Beijing and U.S. Embassy Ulaanbaatar.
Mr. Schriver has won numerous military and civilian awards from the U.S. government and was presented while at the State Department with the Order of the Propitious Clouds by the President of Taiwan for service promoting U.S.-Taiwan relations. Mr. Schriver received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Williams College and a Master of Arts degree from Harvard University.
Abraham M. Denmark
Abraham M. Denmark is Director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which conducts independent research and hosts frank dialogues to develop actionable ideas for Congress, the Administration, and the broader policy community on issues related to the Asia-Pacific. He also holds a joint appointment as a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. Prior to joining the Wilson Center, Mr. Denmark served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia, where he supported the Secretary of Defense and other senior U.S. government leaders in the formulation and implementation of national security strategies and defense policies toward the region. Mr. Denmark previously worked as Senior Vice President for Political and Security Affairs at The National Bureau of Asian Research, a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and held several positions in the U.S. Intelligence Community.
Mr. Denmark has authored dozens of articles and edited several books on the Asia-Pacific and U.S. national security, including several editions of the Strategic Asia book series. He has testified multiple times before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. His commentary has been featured in major media outlets in the United States and in Asia, including National Public Radio, the Financial Times, the National Interest, Foreign Policy, and the Atlantic. In January 2017, Mr. Denmark received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. He also received the Order of the Resplendent Banner from the Republic of China (Taiwan), was made an Honorary Admiral in the Navy of the Republic of Korea, and was named a 21st Century Leader by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. A Colorado native, Mr. Denmark holds an MA in International Security from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, and received a BA in History with Honors from the University of Northern Colorado. He has also studied at Peking University.
Michael Green
Dr. Michael Green is senior vice president for Asia and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and an associate professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He served on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) from 2001 through 2005, first as director for Asian affairs, and then as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia. Previously, he was senior fellow for East Asian security at the Council on Foreign Relations, director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center and the Foreign Policy Institute, and an assistant professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and senior adviser on Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He also worked in Japan on the staff of a member of the National Diet. Dr. Green is also currently a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute, Australia, and a distinguished scholar at the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation in Tokyo. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from SAIS and did additional graduate and postgraduate research at Tokyo University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Alyssa Ayres
Alyssa Ayres is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She came to CFR after serving as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia from 2010 to 2013. Her book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2018, and was recently selected by the Financial Times for its “Summer 2018: Politics” list. At CFR her work focuses on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia. In 2015, she served as the project director for the CFR-sponsored independent task force on U.S.-India relations, and from 2014 to 2016, as the project director for an initiative on the new geopolitics of China, India, and Pakistan supported by the MacArthur Foundation. During her tenure at the State Department in the Barack Obama administration, Ayres covered all issues across a dynamic region of 1.3 billion people (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and provided policy direction for four U.S. embassies and four consulates.
Dennis Wilder
Dennis Wilder is a senior fellow with the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University. He served more than three decades as a leading China expert working on intelligence and national security for the U.S. government. Most recently, Wilder served as the CIA’s deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific and previous to that had roles as the senior editor of the president’s Daily Brief and National Security Council special assistant to the president and director for East Asian affairs.
Brendan Mulvaney
Brendan Mulvaney is the Director of the China Aerospace Studies Institute. Dr. Mulvaney served as a Marine for a quarter of a century, where he flew more than 2000 hours as a AH-1W Cobra pilot, and was an Olmsted Scholar in Shanghai, China. He served at Camp Pendleton, CA; in China as an Olmsted Scholar at Fudan University, where he earned his Ph.D. in International Relations; in Iraq; in Washington D.C. as the inaugural Director of the Commandant of the Marine Corps’ Red Team, and most recently at U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis where he was the Associate Chair for Languages and Cultures and taught Chinese language and culture.
Mark Stokes
Mark Stokes is the Executive Director of the Project 2049 Institute, and a member the Global Taiwan Institute’s advisory board. Previously, he was the founder and president of Quantum Pacific Enterprises, an international consulting firm, and vice president and Taiwan country manager for Raytheon International. He has served as executive vice president of Laifu Trading Company, a subsidiary of the Rehfeldt Group; a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and member of the Board of Governors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan. A 20-year U.S. Air Force veteran, Stokes also served as team chief and senior country director for the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan and Mongolia in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. He holds a B.A. from Texas A&M University, and graduate degrees in International Relations and Asian Studies from Boston University and the Naval Postgraduate School. He has working proficiency in Chinese
Willy Wo-Lap Lam
Dr. Willy Wo-Lap Lam is a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Center for China Studies, the History Department and the Program of Master’s in Global Political Economy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of five books on China, including “Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping” (Routledge 2015).
Anne-Marie Brady
Professor Anne-Marie Brady, BA, MA Auckland, PhD ANU is a specialist in Chinese and polar politics based at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. She is a fluent Mandarin speaker. Anne-Marie is the executive editor of The Polar Journal, and has written nine books and over forty scholarly articles on topics ranging from China’s modern propaganda system, foreigner-management in China and competing foreign policy interests in Antarctica. Her latest monograph, China as a Polar Great Power, examines China’s polar policies.
Charles Parton
Charlie Parton is an Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He spent 22 years of his 37-year diplomatic career working in or on China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In his final posting he was seconded to the EU Delegation in Beijing, where, as First Counsellor until late 2016, he focused on Chinese politics and internal developments, and advised the EU and Member States on how China’s politics might affect their interests. He has also worked in Afghanistan, Cyprus, Libya and Mali. In 2017 he set up his own consultancy, China Ink, and was chosen as the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Special Adviser on China; he returned to Beijing for 4 months as Adviser to the British Embassy to cover the Communist Party’s 19th Congress. He is a trustee of Chinadialogue, a NGO which focuses on China’s environmental issues.
Jude Blanchette
Jude Blanchette is the Senior Advisor and China Practice Lead at Crumpton Group, helping Clients to navigate market entry, negotiations, and business operations; assess political risk; anticipate future opportunities; and create smart exit strategies.
Previously he was the engagement director at The Conference Board’s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing, where he led the Center’s research on China’s political environment, with a focus on the workings of the Communist Party and its impact on foreign investors. Prior to working at The Conference Board, he was the assistant director of the 21st Century China Program at the University of California, San Diego.
Mr. Blanchette is a contributor to Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, China Economic Quarterly, and his Chinese translations have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. His book, China’s New Red Guards: The Return of Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong, will be published in June 2019 by Oxford University Press.
Mr. Blanchette holds a Master’s degree in modern Chinese studies from the University of Oxford and a BA in economics from the Loyola University in Maryland. He lived and worked in China for more than 10 years.
Yisuo Tzeng
Dr. Yisuo Tzeng leads the Cyber Warfare and Information Security division at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), a non-partisan research organization affiliated with Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. As a non-resident research fellow at the National Chiao Tung University’s International Institute for Cultural Studies, he also lectures as an adjunct assistant professor at National Defense University and Tamkang University. He holds a B.A. in finance from National Taiwan University and a Ph.D. in political science from the George Washington University. In recent years, Dr. Tzeng has extended his research from democratic civil-military relations to governance of cyberspace, digital social control and mass surveillance. After coming to the INDSR, he has led research on China’s online propaganda, disinformation campaigns and digital surveillance of Taiwan and Belt-and-Road Initiative countries.
Peter Mattis
Peter Mattis is currently a Research Fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and a contributing editor at War on the Rocks. He is also a Fellow in the China Program at The Jamestown Foundation. He edited Jamestown’s bi-weekly China Brief from 2011 to 2013. Prior to The Jamestown Foundation, Mr. Mattis worked as an international affairs analyst for the US Government. He received his M.A. in Security Studies from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and earned his B.A. in Political Science and Asian Studies from the University of Washington in Seattle. He also previously worked as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Asian Research in its Strategic Asia and Northeast Asian Studies programs.
Elsa Kania
Elsa B. Kania is an Adjunct Fellow with the Center for a New American Security’s Technology and National Security Program. She focuses on Chinese defense innovation in emerging technologies in support of the Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Initiative at CNAS, and she also acts as a member of the research team for the new Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and National Security. Her analytic interests include Chinese military modernization, information warfare, and defense science and technology. Elsa is an independent consultant and co-founder of the China Cyber and Intelligence Studies Institute (CCISI). She was also a 2018 Fulbright Specialist and is a Non-Resident Fellow with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre. Elsa works in support of the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) through its Associates Program, and she is a consulting analyst with Pointe Bello and a policy advisor for the non-profit Technology for Global Security. Elsa has been named an official “Mad Scientist” by the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. Elsa is a PhD candidate in Harvard University’s Department of Government, and she is also a graduate of Harvard College (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa). Her thesis on the evolution of the PLA’s strategic thinking on information warfare was awarded the James Gordon Bennett Prize. Her prior professional experience includes time with the Department of Defense, the Long Term Strategy Group, FireEye, Inc., and the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. While at Harvard, she worked as a research assistant at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Elsa was a Boren Scholar in Beijing, China, and she is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
Adam Ni
Adam is a Visiting Fellow in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, at The Australian National University. His main areas of interest include China’s foreign and security policy.
David An
David An is a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute. Previously, he was a political-military affairs officer covering the East Asia region at the U.S. State Department from 2009 to 2014, and initiated the first Taiwan interagency political-military visit to the U.S., which have continued to occur annually. His responsibilities involved coordinating bilateral diplomatic dialogues, arms sales decision making, and reviewing military strategy with the Department of Defense. Mr. An received a State Department Superior Honor Award for initiating this series of political-military visits from senior Taiwan officials, and also for taking the lead on congressional notification of $6.4 billion dollars in U.S. arms sales to Taiwan in 2010. Prior to joining the State Department, he was a Fulbright scholar researching democracy in Taiwan and village elections in China. He received his M.A. from UCSD Graduate School of Global Policy and Strategy and his B.A. from UC Berkeley. He publishes and speaks widely on East Asian political and security matters.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian is a national security reporter at The Daily Beast.. She previously wrote for Foreign Policy magazine. She was a 2017 Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Germany, a 2016 Jefferson Fellow at the East-West Center, a 2016 Fellow with the East-West Center’s Taiwan Program, and a 2015 Religion Reporting Fellow in China with the International Reporting Project. She is also the president of the International China Journalists Association. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other outlets, and she has appeared as a commentator on C-SPAN, CNN International, BBC’s The World, PRI, Al Jazeera, ABC Radio, Deutsche Welle, and Voice of America Chinese. In 2018, Ms. Allen-Ebrahimian received the Robert S. Abbott Memorial Award for her reporting on China, and in 2016, she received an award from the Religion News Association for her reporting on Muslims in China. Before joining Foreign Policy, she lived and worked in China for more than four years. She holds a masters degree from Yale University and a graduate certificate from the Johns Hopkins SAIS-Nanjing Center, and speaks and reads Chinese fluently.
Joe McReynolds
Joe McReynolds is the Chinese Security Studies Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation and a Principal Cyber Analyst at SOS International. His research interests primarily center on China’s approach to computer network warfare and defense science & technology development. Mr. McReynolds has previously worked with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council for International Policy, and is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and Graduate Security Studies programs. He speaks and reads Chinese and Japanese, and has lived and studied in Nagoya, Guilin and Beijing.
Matthew Schrader
Matt Schrader is the editor of the Jamestown China Brief, and a master’s candidate in the Asian Studies program at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. He worked previously at the Crumpton Group and the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington DC, prior to which he lived in Beijing for nine years, working in the finance, PR, and social enterprise spaces. Matt speaks, reads, and writes Mandarin Chinese fluently, and has translated three books from Mandarin to English. He also holds undergraduate degrees in international affairs and economics from The George Washington University.
Agenda
Registration
8:30 a.m. – 9 a.m.
***
Welcome
9:00 a.m. – 9:05 a.m.
Glen E. Howard
President, The Jamestown Foundation
***
Opening Remarks
9:10 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.
Speaker TBD
***
Panel 1
Reading the Tea Leaves: The Trade War’s Impacts on PRC Domestic Politics
9:30 a.m. – 10:20 a.m.
Moderator:
Matt Schrader
Editor, Jamestown China Brief
Panelists:
Willy Wo-Lap Lam (15 min)
Senior Fellow, Jamestown Foundation
Dennis Wilder (10 min)
Senior Fellow at the Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues
Jude Blanchette (10 min)
Senior Advisor and China Practice Lead, Crumpton Group
Panelists Discussion and Q&A (15 min)
***
Coffee Break
10:20 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.
***
Panel 2
Asia Flashpoints and China – Expecting the Unexpected
10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Moderator:
David An
Research Fellow, Global Taiwan Institute
Panelists:
Michael Green (15 min)
Senior Vice President for Asia and Japan Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abe Denmark (15 min)
Director of the Asia Program, Wilson Center
Alyssa Ayres (15 min)
Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia, Council on Foreign Relations
Panelists Discussion and Q&A (30 min)
***
Lunch and Keynote
12:30 p.m. – 1:20 p.m.
The Honorable Randall G. Schriver
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs
US Department of Defense
***
Panel 3
The United Front and CCP Overseas Influence
1:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
Moderator:
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
National Security Reporter, The Daily Beast
Panelists:
Peter Mattis (15 min)
Research Fellow in China Studies, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
Charles Parton (15 min)
Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute
Anne-Marie Brady (15 min)
Professor, University of Canterbury, Wilson Center Global Fellow
Yi-suo Tzeng (15 min)
Division Director, Institute for National Defense and Security Research (Taiwan)
Panelists Discussion and Q&A (15 min)
***
Coffee Break
2:45 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
***
Panel 4
The PLA in the New Era: Traditional, Non-traditional, and Emerging Threats
3:00 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.
Moderator:
Joe McReynolds
Chinese Security Studies Fellow, Jamestown Foundation
Panelists:
Mark Stokes (15 min)
Executive Director, Project 2049
Elsa Kania (15 min)
Adjunct Fellow, Center for a New American Security
Brendan Mulvaney (15 min)
Director, Chinese Aerospace Studies Institute
Adam Ni (15 min)
Visiting Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Center, Australian National University
Panelists Discussion and Q&A (15 min)
***
Conclusion
4:15 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
