Dan Blumenthal
Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institue (AEI)
Dan Blumenthal is the director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. Mr. Blumenthal has both served in and advised the U.S. government on Asia issues for over a decade. From 2001 to 2004, he served as senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the Department of Defense. Additionally, he served as a commissioner on the congressionally-mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission since 2006-2012, and held the position of vice chairman in 2007. In 2014, he was the John A. van Beuren Chair Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Naval War College. Mr. Blumenthal is a founding director of the Alexander Hamilton Society, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting constructive academic debate on basic principles and contemporary issues in national security policy. Additionally, Mr. Blumenthal is co-author of the book “An Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century” (AEI Press, November 2012) and co-editor of the book “Strategy in Asia: The Past, Present, and Future of Regional Security” (Stanford University Press, October 2014).
Dave Brown
Adjunct Professor, China Studies, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)
Dave Brown is an adjunct professor in China studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University. From 1999 to 2006, he served as the Associate Director of Asian Studies at SAIS. Before joining SAIS, he served for over thirty years as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. State Department. His diplomatic career began with an assignment to Taipei and included postings to Tokyo, Beijing, Hong Kong and Saigon as well as tours in Vienna and Oslo. After leaving government, Dave Brown served as the Chair of the East Asian Area Studies course at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute from 1998 to 2000.
Liu Shih-chung
Board Member, Cross-Strait Interflow Prospect Foundation
Liu Shih-chung is a board member of the Cross-strait Prospect Foundation in Taiwan. He joined the Tainan City Government in January 2015 as Deputy Secretary-general. His past working experiences include: the President and CEO of the Taipei-based Taiwan Brain Trust, the director of International Affairs Department of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and an advisor to the Mainland Affairs Council. From September 2008 to December 2009, Mr. Liu was a visiting fellow at the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies of the Washington-based Brookings Institution. Mr. Liu also spent eight years in the DPP government as a senior foreign policy adviser to former President Chen Shui-bian in the Presidential Office from 2000 to 2006 and then joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the Vice Chairman of Research and Planning Committee. His research covers the fields of Taiwan’s domestic politics and foreign policy, cross-strait relations, US-Taiwan relations and Asian security, politics and economics. Mr. Liu earned his M.A. from the Department of Political Science at Columbia University where he was also a Ph.D candidate.
Moderator
Christopher K. Johnson
Senior Adviser and Freeman Chair in China Studies, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Christopher K. Johnson is a senior adviser and holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS. An accomplished Asian affairs specialist, Mr. Johnson spent nearly two decades serving in the U.S. government’s intelligence and foreign affairs communities and has extensive experience analyzing and working in Asia on a diverse set of country-specific and transnational issues. He has frequently advised senior White House, cabinet, congressional, military, and foreign officials on the Chinese leadership and on Beijing’s foreign and security policies. Mr. Johnson worked as a senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he played a key role in the analytic support to policymakers during the 1996 Taiwan Strait missile crisis, the 1999 accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the downing of a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft on Hainan Island in 2001, and the SARS epidemic in 2003. Mr. Johnson served as an intelligence liaison to two secretaries of state and their deputies on worldwide security issues and in 2011 was awarded the U.S. Department of State’s Superior Honor Award for outstanding support to the secretary and her senior staff.
