RSIS Seminar by Professor Harry Harding, Professor of Public Policy, University of Virginia and Dr Syaru Shirley Lin, Lecturer, University of Virginia

Seminar Abstract

The implications of China’s rise for Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States are increasingly complex and controversial, especially because it has been associated not with democratization at home and conciliatory behavior abroad, as many had hoped, but rather with tighter domestic political controls and the more forceful assertion of Beijing’s core foreign policy interests.

How are these developments affecting Hong Kong and Taiwan, both of which are forming separate political identities even as their economies become increasingly interdependent with China’s? What are the implications for the United States, whose policy of engagement with China is increasingly criticized as having fallen short of its goals? As the Trump Administration takes a tougher line on China, how is the rest of the region responding?

About the Speakers

Harry Harding is University Professor and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Virginia. A specialist on U.S.-China relations, his major publications include Organizing China: The Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949-1976; China’s Second Revolution: Reform After Mao; A Fragile Relationship: the United States and China Since 1972; and the chapter on the Cultural Revolution in the Cambridge History of China. Harding was the founding dean of UVa’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Since completing his five-year term in 2014, Harding has had visiting positions at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the University of Hong Kong while maintaining his permanent position at the University of Virginia. He is presently Adjunct Chair Professor in the College of Social Sciences at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

Harding has held appointments at Swarthmore, Stanford, and the Brookings Institution and completed two terms as dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He was vice-chairman of the Asia Foundation and has served on the boards of several other non-profit and educational organizations, as well as the U.S. Defense Policy Board and the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Scientific and Technological Cooperation.

Syaru Shirley Lin teaches political economy at the University of Virginia and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has also taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing and National Chengchi University in Taipei. Her book, Taiwan’s China Dilemma, on the impact of the evolution of Taiwanese national identity on cross-Strait economic policy was published by Stanford University Press in 2016. She is currently working on the high income trap in East Asia. Her commentary frequently appears in English and Chinese media. Prof. Lin graduated cum laude from Harvard College and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Hong Kong.

Prof. Lin was a partner at Goldman Sachs, where she led the firm’s efforts in private equity and venture capital in Asia. She spearheaded the firm’s investments in many technology start-ups and was a founding board member of Alibaba Group and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. Previously, she specialized in the privatization of state-owned enterprises in mainland China, Singapore and Taiwan.

Prof. Lin currently serves on the board of Goldman Sachs Asia Bank, Langham Hospitality Investments and Mercuries Life Insurance. She was appointed by the Hong Kong government to the Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation and advises the Focused Ultrasound Foundation and Crestview Partners.