Dan Blumenthal is a resident fellow in Asian studies at AEI, where he writes on such issues as U.S. strategy in the Asia-Pacific, cross-straits relations between China and Taiwan, and U.S. defense posture in the region. Until November 2004, he was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for international security affairs during the first George W. Bush administration. In that capacity, he led a team that formulated and implemented defense policies and programs toward and for these portfolio countries. Before his service at the Department of Defense, Mr. Blumenthal practiced law in New York and was as a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Elizabeth Economy is the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her most recent book, The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future (Cornell University Press, 2004), won the International Convention on Asia Scholars award for best social sciences book published on Asia in 2003 or 2004. She has published extensively on both Chinese domestic and foreign policy, including articles in foreign policy and scholarly journals such as Foreign Affairs and Survival, and op-eds and book reviews in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the International Herald Tribune, among others. She serves on several China-related boards and consults frequently for the U.S. government.

Joshua Kurlantzick is a visiting scholar in the Carnegie Endowment’s China Program. Also a special correspondent for The New Republic, Kurlantzick is assessing China’s relationship with Southeast Asia, particularly in the context of China’s relationship with other parts of the developing world and the United States. He is also exploring how China uses its soft power—culture, investment, academia— to influence other countries in Asia. Mr. Kurlantzick was previously foreign editor at The New Republic. Earlier, he covered international economics and trade for U.S. News and World Report.  He also reported on Southeast Asia for The Economist as a correspondent based in Bangkok, Thailand. Mr. Kurlantzick's articles also have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Harper's, The Atlantic, GQ, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, Current History, and the Washington Quarterly.

Phillip C. Saunders has been a senior research professor at the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies since January 2004. He previously worked at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where he served as director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies from 1999–2004 and taught courses on Chinese politics, Chinese foreign policy, and East Asian security. Mr. Saunders has conducted research and consulted on East Asian security issues for Princeton University, the Council on Foreign Relations, RAND, and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Mr. Saunders served as an officer in the United States Air Force from 1989–1993, working on Asian security issues at the Pentagon. He has published numerous articles on China, North Korea, and Asian security in journals including International Security, China Quarterly, China Journal, Survival, Pacific Review, and Orbis. He speaks Mandarin Chinese and has traveled throughout East Asia.

Robert Sutter became a visiting professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in August 2001. Mr. Sutter specialized in Asian and Pacific Affairs and United States foreign policy in a U.S. government career of 30 years. He held a variety of analytical and supervisory positions with the Library of Congress for over 20 years, and he also worked with the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After leaving the Library of Congress, where he was for many years the senior specialist in international politics for the Congressional Research Service, Mr. Sutter served for two years as the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and the Pacific at the U.S. Government’s National Intelligence Council. He has held adjunct faculty positions with Georgetown, George Washington, and Johns Hopkins Universities and the University of Virginia. He has published 14 books; the most recent, China's Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), shows the recent increase in China's influence in Asia to be less than many have claimed.

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