Join us on Monday, July 1 at 6:30 p.m. for a conversation about The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan, a new book from the Hoover Institution edited by Matt Pottinger, distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and former deputy national security advisor. There are urgent but feasible steps to deter China from pursuing a catastrophic invasion or blockade of Taiwan—and grave consequences for democracies everywhere if deterrence fails. Pottinger and his coauthors, who include acclaimed military and political leaders and scholars from around the world, map out a workable military strategy for Taiwan, the United States, Japan, Australia, and Europe to pursue collectively and with haste to avert a devastating war.

Join us for a conversation about this book with Matt Pottinger, Amb. Winston Lord, U.S. Ambassador to China from 1985 to 1989, and Jianying Zha, writer and journalist, and Zongyuan Zoe Liu, the Maurice R. Greenberg Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, moderated by Orville Schell, Vice President and Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. The panelists will discuss the shifts in China over the past decades that have led to this moment of potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

Matt Pottinger is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.  Pottinger served the White House for four years in senior roles on the National Security Council staff, including as deputy national security advisor from 2019 to 2021. In that role, he coordinated the full spectrum of national security policy. He previously served as senior director for Asia, where he led the administration’s work on the Indo-Pacific region, in particular its shift on China policy. Before his White House service, Pottinger spent the late 1990s and early 2000s in China as a reporter for Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. He then fought in Iraq and Afghanistan as a US Marine during three combat deployments between 2007 and 2010. Following active duty, he founded and led an Asia-focused risk consultancy and ran Asia research at an investment fund in New York. 

Amb. Winston Lord was U.S. Ambassador to China from 1985 to 1989 under President Ronald Reagan, and served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 1993 to 1997 under President Bill Clinton. In the 1970s, he was Special Assistant to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and then Director of the State Department Policy Planning staff. During this period, he was on every China trip and attended every meeting that President Nixon, President Ford, and Dr. Kissinger had with President Mao Zedong, Premier Zhou Enlai, and Deputy Premier Deng Xiaoping, and was a principal drafter of both the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué and the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. In the 1960s, Lord served in the Pentagon and the Foreign Service. Outside of government, his service has included President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Co-Chairman of the International Rescue Committee, and Chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy. 

Jianying Zha is a writer, journalist, and cultural critic in both English and Chinese. She is the author of two books in English, Tide Players: The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China, and China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture and six books of fiction and non-fiction in Chinese, including the award winning Bashiniandai (The Eighties). Her work has appeared widely in publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Nineties Monthly, Dushu, and Wanxiang. Her latest book (co-authored with Kato Yoshikazu), Freedom Is Not Free: A New Decameron, was published in 2020 by Oxford University Press in Hong Kong. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Zha also has been a regular commentator on current events on Chinese television, and worked for many years for India China Institute at The New School. 

Zongyuan Zoe Liu is the Maurice R. Greenberg Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Her work focuses on international finance, sovereign wealth funds, industrial policies, and the geoeconomics of energy transition. Her regional expertise is in East Asia and the Middle East. Dr. Liu is the author of Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System? and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) of Columbia University as well as a columnist for Foreign Policy. She received her PhD in international relations from Johns Hopkins University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charter holder.

Orville Schell (moderator) is Vice President and Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, and a former dean of the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. Schell is the author of fifteen books, ten of them about China, and a contributor to numerous edited volumes.