Minxin Pei, senior associate and director of the China program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and James Sasser, former U.S. ambassador to China, will present a panel discussion titled "Debating China's Future: Two Contrasting Perspectives" on Monday, Sept. 11, at 8 p.m. in the Science Center Auditorium (G027). This discussion of the ongoing transformation in China and its implications to the United States is hosted by the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center. It is funded by the Edwin Lee Fund and is free and open to the public.
Pei is the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union and China's Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy. His editorials have appeared in the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and other major newspapers. Before arriving at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, D.C., Pei received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University and taught politics at Princeton University from 1992 to 1998.
Sasser is a former U.S. Senator from Tennessee (1977 - 1995). In 1989, Sasser became chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and helped negotiate the 1990 budget summit agreement with President George H.W. Bush. In 1993, he engineered passage of President Bill Clinton's first budget, which reduced the deficit by $500 billion dollars over 10 years. Sasser went on to serve as ambassador to China during the period of alleged nuclear spying and the 1996 U.S. campaign finance scandal that involved possible efforts by China to influence domestic U.S. politics during the Clinton administration.
Hamilton alumnus and former U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus Michael Klosson '71 will serve as moderator. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Klosson has served as Consul General for Hong Kong and Macau (1999 - 2002) and is international affairs advisor and state department chair for the National Defense University in Washington. He is the current Linowitz Visiting Professor of International Affairs at Hamilton.
Future Levitt Center events include lectures by Anders Aslund, senior fellow at the Institute of International Economics and adjunct professor at Georgetown University, on September 27 at 7:30 p.m., and Elizabeth Economy, CV Starr Senior Fellow and director for Asian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, on October 18 at 4 p.m.
