Breakfast available from 8:00 a.m.
Discussion begins at 8:30 a.m.

Ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reported visit to Beijing, join us for a discussion on the directions and global implications of the China-Russia partnership and the launch of a new initiative by the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis (ASPI CCA) -- "Brothers Forever: Unpacking the Conundrum of China-Russia Relations”. To mark the launch of this new initiative, Asia Society Chief Programming Officer Philipp Ivanov will host ASPI CCA's Lyle Morris and Guoguang Wu, and the Center for Naval Analyses' Elizabeth Wishnick.

The relationship between China and Russia is highly consequential for global peace and prosperity. The expanding ties between two of the world’s largest, nuclear-armed, autocratic states -- accelerated dramatically by Russia’s war on Ukraine and the deteriorating relationship between China and the United States -- are having an impact on virtually every facet of global security and economy.

The new initiative by ASPI CCA will examine the rapidly evolving relationship between Beijing and Moscow through research and analysis, programs and conversations with experts, and digital and video content. It will survey ideological, strategic, political and economic drivers of the relationship. It will also examine Russian and Chinese perceptions of their partnership and their respective world views.

Visit the initiative website here: Brothers Forever: Unpacking the Conundrum of China-Russia Relations

Read our first reports:

The Beijing-Moscow Axis: Evolving European Perspectives

Together and Apart: The Conundrum of the China-Russia Partnership

Unease, Not Confidence, Defines China’s “Partnership” with Russia

Interpreting Xi Jinping's Shifting Strategy on the Russia-Ukraine War

Speakers

Lyle J. Morris is Senior Fellow for Foreign Policy and National Security at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. Prior to joining ASPI, he was a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation leading projects on Chinese military modernization and Asia-Pacific security from 2011-2022. From 2019 to 2021, he served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) as the Country Director for China, advising OSD on defense relations between the Department of Defense and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and on Indo-Pacific maritime security. He received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service for his service. Before joining RAND, he was the 2010–11 Next Generation Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and a research intern with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has lived and studied in Beijing, China for four years, where he studied Mandarin at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies at Tsinghua University and later worked at Dentsu Advertising and the China Economist Journal.

Dr. Elizabeth Wishnick is Senior Research Scientist for China Studies at the Center for Naval Analyses. She is an expert on Sino-Russian relations, Chinese foreign policy and Arctic strategy. At CNA, she contributes her dual regional expertise on China and Russia, including professional proficiency in both languages, to research and analysis of Xi Jinping’s risk-taking, Sino-Russian military cooperation, and China’s Arctic policy. She is also a senior research scholar at Columbia’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute and a professor at Montclair State University, where she has taught political science. Her book project, China’s Risk: Energy, Water, Food and Regional Security (forthcoming Columbia University Press) addresses the security consequences of energy, water and food risks in China for its Eurasian neighbors, a topic she explores in a related policy blog, www.chinasresourcerisks.com. She is the author of Mending Fences: Moscow’s China Policy from Brezhnev to Yeltsin, three monographs for the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, and more than sixty academic and policy articles. She spent about three years living and working in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and received two Fulbright awards, one for Hong Kong in 2002, and another for China, Russia, and Kazakhstan in 2018. She also has traveled extensively in the Russian Far East for research. She was previously a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Stanford University, Harvard University, and the Academia Sinica (Taiwan). Her analysis has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, and The Diplomat, and she was featured on the PBS NewsHour.

Dr. Guoguang Wu is Senior Fellow on Chinese Politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis. With a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University, now he is a senior research scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, Stanford University. His research specializes in Chinese politics and comparative political economy, including, in China studies, elite politics, national political institutions and policy making mechanisms, transition from communism, the politics of development, China’s search for its position in the world, and, in comparative political economy, transition of capitalism with globalization, the emergence of capitalism in comparative perspectives, and the worldwide rise of the economic state. He is the author of four books, which include two major research monographs: Globalization against Democracy: The Political Economy of Capitalism after Its Global Triumph (2017), and China’s Party Congress: Power, Legitimacy, and Institutional Manipulation (2015).

Philipp Ivanov (moderator) is the founder of the China-Russia program at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. Philipp is Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute and Chief Programming Officer at Asia Society leading global programs and collaborations among our 16 centers. Previously, Philipp served as Chief Executive Officer of the Asia Society Australia Center from 2015 to 2023. In 2023, he was a Fulbright Scholar and visiting fellow at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Earlier, he worked on China policy for the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and as a Deputy Director of the Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific at the University of Sydney. He was awarded the Australian Government’s Endeavour Executive Fellowship to conduct research on China’s policies for leadership development at the National Academy of Education Administration in Beijing. His commentary and analysis have appeared in Foreign Policy, The Australian, ABC, Bloomberg News, CNBC, The Australian Financial Review, Melbourne Asia Review, and ChinaFile. A fluent Chinese and Russian speaker, he grew up in Vladivostok and lived and worked in China for over six years, before making Australia his home.