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Schedule

Thursday, August 20, 2020
7:30 p.m. Moderated Discussion
8:10 p.m. Audience Q&A — Questions welcome via YouTube Live and Facebook Live

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China and the United States are world powers without serious rivals. They eye each other warily across the Pacific; they communicate poorly; there seems to be little natural empathy. They form the defining geopolitical contest of the 21st century: America values strategic decisiveness; China values patience. America has abandoned multilateralism; China welcomes it. In 2020, the relationship is even more tense than ever due to the rapid growth of Chinese economic, technological, and military power; the aggravation of the coronavirus pandemic on existing relations; and a fraught political atmosphere amid the ongoing U.S. presidential election season. In these circumstances, is confrontation avoidable? And if it happens, is the outcome already inevitable?

Join Asia Society as Kishore Mahbubani, a diplomat and scholar with unrivaled access to policymakers in Beijing and Washington, discusses his recent book Has China Won?: The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy, in which he presents the deep fault lines in the relationship and offers an honest appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses, and superpower eccentricities, of the U.S. and China.

About the Speaker

Kishore Mahbubani is a veteran diplomat, student of philosophy, and author of eight books. He is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. His careers in diplomacy and academia have taken him from Singapore’s Chargé d'Affaires to wartime Cambodia (1973-74) and President of the UN Security Council (Jan 2001, May 2002) to the Founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (2004-2017).  

Mahbubani writes and speaks prolifically on the rise of Asia, geopolitics and global governance. He has also been a prolific author, having published eight books: Can Asians Think?, Beyond The Age Of Innocence, The New Asian Hemisphere, The Great Convergence, Can Singapore Survive?, The ASEAN Miracle (co-authored with Jeffery Sng) and Has the West Lost It?. His latest book, Has China Won?, was released on 31st March 2020. His articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, and Foreign Affairs have earned him global recognition as “the muse of the Asian century.” Since his 1998 debut Can Asians Think?, he has challenged conventional wisdom on the big questions of our time.

Mahbubani has been listed among the world’s top 100 public intellectuals by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines and among the Top 50 individuals who would shape the debate on the future of capitalism by the Financial Times. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October 2019. More information can be found on www.mahbubani.net.

About the Moderator 

Martyn E. Goossen is Vice Chairman of the J.P. Morgan Private Bank. Marty has over 40 years of experience in financial services, nearly all of which has been in the wealth management field. The majority of his career was spent working in Asia. Marty and his wife, Kathy, moved to Hong Kong with Citibank in 1978 and transferred to Tokyo in 1984. Marty joined JPMorgan Chase in Tokyo in 1988 and remained in Asia until 2006, when he moved to Houston to take the position as head of the Houston Private Bank and President of the Houston Region. In 2017, Marty was appointed to Vice Chairman of the J.P. Morgan Private Bank focusing on the south region of the United States. Marty has undertaken a number of civic responsibilities in Houston. He serves on the boards of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Asia Society Texas Center, Central Houston Inc., and The Houston Zoo. He is also a member of the Council of Overseers at Rice University’s Jones School of Business and is a Director of the Singapore American School Foundation. Marty received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1977 and a B.S. in Economics from Union College in Schenectady, New York.

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