CHINA Town Hall with Former Ambassador Jon M. Huntsman Jr.

Presented by the Washington State China Relations Council we are pleased to announce a virtual CHINA Town Hall event featuring both national and local sessions. The national webcast session will feature Jon. M. Huntsman Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to China, Russia and Singapore. A local discussion session will follow the national webcast with a panel of local China experts.

We encourage you to participate in both sessions.

LOCAL VIRTUAL DISCUSSION SPEAKERS

PANELISTS

Dr. David Bachman is the Henry M. Jackson Professor of International Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He is also the Associate Director at the Jackson School. Dr. Bachman has been a faculty member at UW since 1991, and taught at Stanford University and Princeton University prior to coming to the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He is the author/editor of three books and more than 50 articles on Chinese politics, foreign policy, political economy, and US-China relations. At the UW he teaches courses on Chinese Foreign Policy, US-China Relations, The Rise of Asia and the Making of the 21st Century.

Dr. Bachman is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and President of the Washington State China Relations Council in 2005. He has chaired the Fulbright Committee on Academic Exchanges with the PRC.

Dr. Susan Whiting is Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she also holds adjunct appointments in the Jackson School of International Studies and the School of Law. She specializes in Chinese and comparative politics, with an emphasis on the political economy of development. She has published articles and chapters on authoritarianism, “rule of law,” property rights, fiscal reform, and rural development in volumes and journals such as Comparative Political Studies and China Quarterly. Her first book, Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy of Institutional Change, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2001.

Dr. Whiting has contributed to studies of governance, fiscal reform, and non-governmental organizations under the auspices of the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the Ford Foundation, respectively. Her current research interests include property rights in land, the role of law in authoritarian regimes, as well as the politics of fiscal reform. She teaches courses on comparative politics, Chinese politics, property rights, and authoritarian regimes.

Dr, Whiting has a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a BA in East Asia Studies from Yale University. She was in the first cohort (2005 – 2007) of the Public Intellectuals Program with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

MODERATOR

Dr. Spencer Cohen is the Principal and Founder of High Peak Strategy LLC, an international trade and economics research consulting firm based in Seattle, WA. Dr. Cohen consults and writes extensively on international trade, China’s economy, leading industries, and regional economic analysis. He has written opinion pieces in the South China Morning Post, The Daily Guardian (India), Puget Sound Business Journal, and Seattle Business Magazine. He works with ports, international trade associations, corporations, and economic development organizations across the U.S. and abroad. Prior to forming High Peak Strategy, he served as senior economist with a Seattle-based economics consulting firm. He has also held policy and research roles with the State of Washington.

Spencer is a 2021-2023 Public Intellectuals Program fellow (seventh cohort) with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He is also an affiliate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington. Dr. Cohen has a PhD in geography from the University of Washington, an MA in China Studies, also from the University of Washington, and BA in mathematics and history from the University of Connecticut.