“Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.” – Napoleon
The rise of China — home to one-quarter of the world’s population — is one of the most pressing issues of our time. China’s rampant growth has fueled an unprecedented economic miracle, an annual economic growth rate in excess of 10%.
But all is not rosy: China’s burgeoning population and booming economy threaten to consume energy, raw materials and land at an unsustainable rate. Furthermore, serious, systemic problems like institutionalized corruption, urban/rural inequality, human rights, and some of the most polluted areas on the planet threaten its continued success.
Will China be able to overcome these hurdles? Will a saner, more prosperous, more democratic China follow on the heels of capitalism? Or will Mao’s communist legacy endure?
More importantly, how will the U.S. and the world cope with China’s rise? How will it affect the U.S.? What does the future hold?
Join us for a vibrant discussion of this contradiction, complex and colorful world power.
KEYNOTE
 Orville Schell
Journalist & Long-Time China Watcher
“Orville Schell has for more than 30 years been widely admired for his original and resourceful journalism, especially his . . . publications about China.” — The San Francisco Examiner
While best known as one of the country's most well informed and thoughtful observers on China, Orville Schell has also been a ship-hand, a war correspondent in Indochina, a rancher, a journalist reporting for such magazines as The New York Times Magazine, Harpers, The New Yorker, TIME, Wired, and Foreign Affairs. He has been a contributor on China for PBS, NBC, and CBS, where a 60 Minutes program of his won an Emmy. He has also served as a correspondent for several PBS/Frontline documentaries on China and Tibet and covered the war in Iraq for The New York Review of Books.
Until recently, Schell served as Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. While he will remain on the UC Berkeley faculty, he has now been appointed as Director of the Asia Society's newly established Center on US-China Relations in New York City. In this new capacity, he will lead new programs on the environment, the media and foreign policy in an effort promote more constructive dialogue between key Chinese and American leaders. He will also be a Fellow at Shorenstein Center at the John F. Kennedy School, Harvard University.
Schell has served on the board of Human Rights Watch, Current TV and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His written work includes some fifteen books, ten of them about China, including Virtual Tibet (2000), Mandate of Heaven: In China, a New Generation of Entrepreneurs, Dissidents, and Technocrats (1995) and Discos and Democracy: China in the Throes of Reform (1988), as well as the comprehensive five-volume China Reader. He is currently working on issues of continuing political and economic reform in China.
Schell has been honored with fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Freedom Forum at Columbia University. He has also received numerous honors, including the Overseas Press Club of America Award, a Page One Award, and, most recently, the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford and Harvard Universities for the best coverage of Asia.
SPEAKERS
 Minxin Pei
Expert on Economic & Political Reform
Minxin Pei is a senior associate and director of the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. His research focuses on democratization in developing countries, economic reform and governance in China, and U.S.-China relations.
He is the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (Harvard Univ. Press, 1994) and China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Harvard Univ. Press, 2006).
Pei’s research has been published in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Modern China, China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy and many edited books. Pei is a frequent commentator on BBC World News, Voice of America, and National Public Radio; his op-eds have appeared in the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek International, and International Herald Tribune, and other major newspapers.
Pei received his B.A. from Shanghai International Studies University, M.F.A. from the University of Pittsburgh, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University.
 Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy
Former Ambassador to China with 45 years of Regional Diplomatic Experience
Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy (“Stape”) retired from the Foreign Service in January 2001 after a career spanning 45 years with the U.S. Department of State. A fluent Chinese speaker, Mr. Roy spent much of his career in East Asia, where his assignments included Bangkok (twice), Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing (twice), Singapore and Jakarta. He also specialized in Soviet affairs and served in Moscow at the height of the Cold War. Before taking up Russian studies, he was one of the first two Foreign Service Officers to study Mongolian. Mr. Roy rose to become a three-time ambassador, serving as the top U.S. envoy in Singapore (1984-86), the People’s Republic of China (1991-95), and Indonesia (1996-99). In 1996 he was promoted to the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest rank in the Foreign Service. Ambassador’s Roy’s final post with the State Department was as Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research. In 2001 he received Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Award for Distinguished Public Service.
In January 2001 Ambassador Roy joined Kissinger Associates, Inc., a strategic consulting firm. He is currently Vice Chairman of the firm and works from offices in New York City and Washington, DC.
Ambassador Roy concurrently serves as a director of ConocoPhillips and Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold. He also serves as Chairman of the Council for the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Policy Studies of the Brookings Institution, and Chairman of the United States Asia Pacific Council. He is a Vice Chairman of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and a Trustee of The Asia Foundation. He is on the boards of The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy of Georgetown University, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs. He is a Distinguished Senior Adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.
Ambassador Roy was born in Nanjing, China of American missionary parents. In 1956, he graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, where he majored in history and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
 Jonathan Spence
Leading Historian on Modern China
Professor Jonathan Spence teaches in the field of Chinese history from around 1600 to the present, and on Western images of China since the middle ages.
Recognized as one of the foremost scholars of Chinese civilization from the 16th century to the present, Spence has written extensively on the role of history in shaping modern China. His critically acclaimed The Search for Modern China (W.W. Norton, 1990) has become one of the standard texts on the last several hundred years of Chinese history. His recent works include a biography of Mao Zedong (Viking, 1999) and Treason by the Book (Viking, 2001), exploring an intriguing episode of 18th-century history. His numerous other books include The Death of Woman Wang (1978); The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (1984); The Question of Hu (1987); Chinese Roundabout: Essays on History and Culture; The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895-1980 (1981); The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds; and God's Chinese Son (1994). His research often takes him to many Chinese Universities.
A native of England, Spence holds a bachelor's degree from Cambridge University and master's and doctoral degrees from Yale. He began teaching at Yale in 1965 and was named the Sterling Professor of History in 1993.
Jonathan Spence served as president of the American Historical Association for the 2004-2005 term. His many honors include the William C. DeVane Medal of the Yale Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in 1978; the Los Angeles Times History Prize in 1982; and the Vursel Prize of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1983. Spence was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985. He was a MacArthur Fellow in 1988, and that year was appointed to the Council of Scholars at the Library of Congress.
In June 2001, he was made a Companion of the Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, an honor given by the Queen of England for outstanding achievement.
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