Beijing’s Early Reactions to the Biden Administration

The year 2020 was a pivotal one for U.S.-China relations, concluding a four-year roller-coaster ride for the world’s most important bilateral relationship during the Trump administration. ASPI’s just-released report The Avoidable War: The Decade of Living Dangerously brings together a series of speeches and essays by Asia Society and ASPI President Kevin Rudd from over the course of 2020 that explore how the last year of the Trump administration fundamentally altered the direction of U.S.-China relations and world affairs.

Now, with the Biden administration taking charge in Washington and quickly implementing its own take on U.S. strategy toward China, Beijing has begun assessing what the new administration means for the relationship and how to once again adjust course in 2021.

In this special webcast, Rudd joins a conversation with Bill Bishop, author of the influential Sinocism China newsletter, and Susan Jakes, editor of ChinaFile and Senior Fellow at Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, on what happened in 2020 and where U.S.-China relations are likely headed in 2021. Rudd will begin the discussion with a keynote speech on Beijing’s early reactions to the Biden administration.

SPEAKERS

Bill Bishop is an entrepreneur and former media executive with more than a decade’s experience living and working in China, and is the author of the Sinocism China newsletter. Bishop co-founded CBS MarketWatch in 1997 and stayed until its sale in 2004 to Dow Jones. Bilingual in English and Mandarin Chinese, he lived in Beijing from 2005 to 2015, and is an investor in and advisor to several start-up companies as well as a provider of China consulting services. Frequently quoted in major media outlets such as The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, Bishop was named one of the top 50 people shaping the future of the U.S.-China relationship by Foreign Policy’s Pacific Power Index in 2015. He has an M.A. in China Studies from Johns Hopkins SAIS and a B.A. from Middlebury College.

Susan Jakes is Editor of ChinaFile and Senior Fellow at Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations. From 2000-2007, she reported on China for Time magazine, first as a reporter and editor based in Hong Kong and then as the magazine’s Beijing Correspondent. She covered a wide range of topics for Time’s international and domestic editions, including student nationalism, human rights, the environment, public health, education, architecture, kung fu, North Korea’s nuclear weapons, and the making of Bhutan’s first feature film. Jakes was awarded the Society of Publishers in Asia’s Young Journalist of the Year Award for her coverage of Chinese youth culture. In 2003, she broke the story of the Chinese government’s cover-up of the SARS epidemic in Beijing, for which she received a Henry Luce Public Service Award. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. Jakes speaks Mandarin and holds a B.A. and M.A. from Yale in history. Her doctoral studies at Yale, which she suspended to join ChinaFile, focused on China’s environmental history and the global history of ecology.

The Hon. Kevin Rudd AC is President and CEO of the Asia Society, as well as inaugural President of the Asia Society Policy Institute. He served as 26th Prime Minister of Australia (2007 to 2010, 2013) and as Foreign Minister (2010 to 2012). He is Chair of the Board of the International Peace Institute in New York, and Chair of Sanitation and Water for All – a global partnership of government and non-governmental organizations dedicated to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 6. He is a Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House and the Paulson Institute, and a Distinguished Statesman with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a member of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization’s Group of Eminent Persons.