Speaker biographies
Michael Auslin studies U.S.–East Asian relations, Asian security, U.S.–Japanese relations, and Asia-Pacific multilateral organizations. Prior to joining AEI, Mr. Auslin was an associate professor of history and senior research fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. He has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, a Marshall Memorial Fellow by the German Marshall Fund, and a Fulbright and Japan Foundation Scholar. His writings on Japan and Japanese diplomacy include the books Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy (Harvard, 2006) and Japan Society: Celebrating a Century, 1907–2007.
Claude Barfield is a resident scholar AEI. He is the author or editor of a number of books on trade and science policy, including Free Trade, Sovereignty, Democracy: The Future of the World Trade Organization (AEI Press, 2001). In 1999, he coauthored Tiger by the Tail: China and the World Trade Organization (AEI Press) with Mark Groombridge. Mr. Barfield is working with Andrei Zlate on the forthcoming AEI Press book The Eagle and the Dragon: The United States, China, and the Rise of Asian Regionalism. Before coming to AEI, he served in the Gerald R. Ford administration, on the staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and as a co–staff director of the President’s Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties.
Richard Cronin is a senior associate of the Henry L. Stimson Center, which he joined in July 2005 following a long career as an Asian affairs specialist at the Congressional Research Service. At Stimson, Mr. Cronin has organized seminars and spoken and written on a wide variety of issues concerning Southeast Asia and U.S.-ASEAN relations, both here and in the region. He travels frequently to Southeast Asia for research and speaking engagements, including research visits to the Philippines, Thailand, and Laos in March of this year, and visits to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in September. During both trips, he focused on the threats to human security and the environment from the unconstrained and uncoordinated construction of hydropower dams in the Mekong River Basin and on the emergence of transboundary and nontraditional security issues arising from globalization and regional economic integration. Mr. Cronin taught comparative political economy of Asia at Johns Hopkins University from 1996 to 2002 as a visiting professor and comparative economic policy of East and Southeast Asia to government officials in Vietnam and Laos in early 2005. He served as a counterintelligence officer with the First Infantry Division in Vietnam between September 1965 to July 1966.
Da Wei is the representative of China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) in Washington, D.C. He is also a visiting scholar at the Atlantic Council of the United States. Before April 2006, Mr. Da was the deputy director and an associate research professor at the Institute of American Studies of CICIR. His primary research areas include U.S. foreign policy (especially in the Asia–Pacific region and the Middle East) and Sino-U.S. relations. His ongoing research includes Sino-U.S. relations at a global level and the development of the Taiwan situation. Mr. Da is the author of dozens of essays and several book chapters in related areas.
Christopher Griffin is a research fellow in Asian studies at AEI, where he studies competing strategies among the great powers for influence in Southeast Asia and the reemergence of Japan as a “normal” power. Before joining AEI in January 2005, he was a research assistant in the strategic studies department at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Since May 2006, Mr. Griffin has been a contributing editor to Armed Forces Journal, for which he writes on defense-industrial issues and military blogs.
Keiichi Hori is a research fellow of Asian Forum Japan (AFJ). At AFJ, his primary research areas include U.S.-Japanese relations and North East Asian issues. He is in charge of editing the AFJ-Report. In addition, since 2006 he has served as an editorial stuff member for an annual book entitled The Issues for Japan, published by Bungei Shunjyuu, the most famous and prestigious publisher in Japan. He received his M.A. from Hitotsubashi University.
The Honorable Masafumi Ishii is currently the head of the political section of the Embassy of Japan located in Washington D.C. He joined the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), in 1980. Since joining MOFA, Minister Ishii has held posts including director of the policy planning division of the foreign policy bureau in Japan, director of the second Southeast Asia division of the Asian and Oceanian affairs bureau in Japan, assistant to the foreign minister in Japan, and head of the political section of the embassy of Japan in the UK.
Richard Katz is editor of the Oriental Economist, a monthly newsletter on Japan, as well as the semi-weekly TOE Alert. Mr. Katz is the author of two books on Japan: Japan: The System That Soured—The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Economic Miracle and Japanese Phoenix: The Long Road to Economic Revival. He has testified twice before the Asia-Pacific Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee. In 2000, he served on the Council of Foreign Relations’s Task Force on the Japanese economy. He coauthored the essay “How Able is Abe?” in the March/April 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Katz’s comments on Japan have been frequently quoted in major publications such as the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Economist, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Jose Mercury News, and he has been interviewed on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, Bloomberg TV, the BBC’s The World, and NPR’s Marketplace.
Philip I. Levy studies international trade and development at AEI. Before joining AEI, he handled international economic issues as a member of the secretary of state’s policy planning staff (2005–2006), was senior economist for trade on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (2003–2005), and was a faculty member in Yale University’s Department of Economics (1994–2003). An economist by training, he has experience in many international trade and development policy issues, including free trade agreements, trade with China, antidumping policy, welfare effects of globalization, U.S. foreign assistance policy, and economic development policy.
The Honorable John D. Negroponte is the deputy secretary of state, the Department of State’s second ranking official. Appointed by President George W. Bush, he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on February 12, 2007, and was sworn into office by Vice President Dick Cheney on February 13. As deputy secretary of state, he assists Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy and functions as the chief operating officer of the department. He coordinates and supervises U.S. government activities overseas, represents the department before Congress, and manages key foreign policy issues on the secretary’s behalf. Prior to his current assignment, Ambassador Negroponte served as the first director of national intelligence, for which he was sworn in on April 21, 2005. Previously, he had been serving as U.S. ambassador to Iraq since June 28, 2004. From September 18, 2001, until his appointment to Iraq, Ambassador Negroponte served as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. From 1997 to 2001, he was employed in the private sector as executive vice president for global markets of the McGraw-Hill Companies in New York. From 1960 to 1997, Ambassador Negroponte was a member of the Career Foreign Service. He served at eight different foreign service posts in Asia, Europe and Latin America, and he also held important positions at the State Department and the White House. Among other assignments, Ambassador Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras (1981–85), assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific Affairs (1985–87), deputy assistant to the President for national security affairs (1987–89), ambassador to Mexico (1989–93), and ambassador to the Philippines (1993–96). He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Diplomacy and a former chairman of the French-American Foundation.
Brigadier Arun Sahgal (Retired) is head of the Center for Strategic Studies and Simulation and deputy director of the United Service Institution of India. In a career spanning over thirty-six years in the Indian army, he held a number of important command, staff, and instructional appointments. His highest assignment has been as the director of the Office of Net Assessment, Integrated Defense Staff (Ministry of Defense). His academic pursuits include stints as a senior fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses and as a distinguished fellow of the School of Geo-Politics at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. Brigadier Sahgal’s research areas include geopolitical and strategic dimensions of Asian security with a focus on China, India’s strategic neighborhood, and U.S.-Indian strategic relations. He recently completed a major net assessment study of Sino-Indian military balancing through 2025 for the Indian Joint Staff, and he drafted India’s National Security Strategy. Brigadier Sahgal continues to support the Indian Joint Staff through consultancy assignments and is a regular contributor to international and national journals.
Beth Anne Wilson is a senior economist in the International Finance Division of the Federal Reserve Board. She currently covers India and has followed emerging market issues since 1999. During 2003–2004, she was a senior economist for international finance at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Her earlier work at the board focused on U.S. labor markets. She has an active research agenda in areas such as wage behavior, macroeconomic volatility, and finance. Ms. Wilson’s published works include “India and the Global Economy,” with Geoffrey Keim, in Business Economics (2006).
Lanxin Xiang is a professor of international history and politics at the Graduate Institute of International Studies (HEI) in Geneva. He is also director of the Center for China Policy Analysis (CCPA) at HEI. He held the Henry A. Kissinger Chair of Foreign Policy and International Affairs at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., from 2003 to 2004. Mr. Xiang also holds a chair in international affairs at Fudan University in Shanghai and a visiting chair at the China Foreign Affairs University. He served from 2001 to 2007 as Zijiang Chair and chairman of the council at the School of Advanced International and Area Studies. He is the author of three English books: Recasting the Imperial Far East, Mao’s Generals, and The Origins of the Boxer War (the latter in English and in Chinese). His newest book, Tradition and Chinese Foreign Relations: The Ideological Context of Sino-U.S. Relations, was published in August 2007. In February 2006, he began working with the National Intelligence Council on the Trilateral Forum on China (TFC), a policy-oriented forum consisting of top policymakers, academics, and experts from East Asia, Europe, and the United States. The fourth TFC meeting will be held in Geneva in December 2007.
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