Seminar: China’s Asia Strategy: Opportunities and Challenges
About the Seminar
Two things have become increasingly clear in Chinese foreign policy: (1) an aspiration to extend and enhance China’s power and influence, soft and hard, or even to have a preponderant role in the longer term, in Asia and the Western Pacific; and (2) after taking primarily a “strategic military” approach over nearly two years with mixed results, President Xi Jinping has sought to make a change towards a “strategic economic”’ approach. However, a few major aspects of the “strategic military” approach still remain in his fundamental posture, making his approach a combined and complex one and looking like “strategic expansion” without any major pull-back. As demonstrated by the practices of the “strategic military” approach there is an imperative for prudence which should be met by China’s future efforts in the One Belt One Road and similar “strategic economic”’ projects so as to prevent strategic overreach.
About the Speaker
Professor Shi Yinhong is a leading strategic thinker in China. He is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center on American Studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing since 2001. He has served as a Counsellor of the State Council of People’s Republic of China since February 2011. He was previously Professor of International History at Nanjing University where he had also received his PhD in International History in 1988. He served as President of American Historical Research Association of China from 1996 to 2002. He has been a visiting fellow at Harvard-Yenching Institute at Harvard University (1983-1984); a Fulbright visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1995-1996). He taught graduate courses as Visiting Professor at University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 2004, 2005, and 2008, and at Aichi University in Nagoya (2004).
Professor Shi has published seventeen books, most of them in China, including Foreign Policy and Historical Lessons (2014); The Pathology, Resurgence, Decline, and Demise of An Empire: A Systematic Analysis of Ba Gu’s Book of Han Dynasty (1st century A.D.) (2014); China’s Political Experience: A Politico-Strategic Reading of Sima Qian’s Historical Record (2 century B.C.) (2012); Thirty Studies on Strategy: Reflections of China’s External Strategy (2008); History of Modern International Relations: From the 16th Century to the end of the 20th (2006); International Politics and Statecraft (2006); From Napoleon to the Vietnam War: Lectures on Modern Strategy (2003); International Politics: Theoretical Exploration, Historical Survey, and Strategic Thinking (2002). He has also published more than 500 articles and essays.
Registration
To register, please fill in this form and email to iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg by 19 September 2016.