SAN FRANCISCO, May 20, 2007 - Joshua Kurlantzick discussed his book Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World at the Asia Society's Northern California Center in San Francisco at an event moderated by T.J. Pempel.

In Charm Offensive, scholar and writer Kurlantzick examines the ways China's soft power is reshaping the world. In the book he argues that with growing support from nations in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, China could become the first nation since the fall of the Soviet Union to seriously challenge the U.S. for control of the international system.

Joshua Kurlantzick

Joshua Kurlantzick is a visiting scholar in the Carnegie Endowment's China Program. Also a special correspondent for The New Republic and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, Kurlantzick is assessing China's relationship with the developing world, including Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Kurlantzick's book, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World (Yale University Press), focuses on how China uses its soft power - culture, investment, academia, foreign aid, public diplomacy - to influence other countries in the developing world. Additionally, Kurlantzick is currently a fellow at the USC School of Public Diplomacy and the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Kurlantzick was previously foreign editor at The New Republic. Earlier, he covered international economics and trade for U.S. News & World Report. He also reported on Southeast Asia for The Economist as a correspondent based in Bangkok, Thailand. Kurlantzick's articles also have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, Current History, and The Washington Quarterly.

T.J. Pempel

T. J. Pempel (Ph.D., Columbia) joined Berkeley's Political Science Department in July 2001 and served as director of the Institute of East Asian Studies from 2002 until 2006. There he held the Il Han New Chair in Asian Studies.

Just prior to coming to Berkeley, he was at the University of Washington at Seattle where he was the Boeing Professor of International Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies and an adjunct professor in Political Science. From 1972 to 1991, he was on the faculty at Cornell University; he was also Director of Cornell's East Asia Program.

He has also been a faculty member at the University of Colorado and the University of Wisconsin. Professor Pempel's research and teaching focus on comparative politics, political economy, contemporary Japan, and Asian regionalism.