China – Fragile Superpower

Susan Shirk is a member of the USC U.S.-China Institute Board of Scholars. She is director of the University of California system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and professor of political science in the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. 

Professor Shirk first traveled to China in 1971 and has been doing research there ever since. 

During 1997-2000, Dr. Shirk served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, with responsibility for the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia.   

She founded in 1993 and continues to lead the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD), an unofficial “track-two” forum for discussions of security issues among defense and foreign ministry officials and academics from the United States, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, and North Korea.  

Dr. Shirk’s publications include her books, How China Opened Its Door:  The Political Success of the PRC’s Foreign Trade and Investment Reforms; The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China; and Competitive Comrades:  Career Incentives and Student Strategies in China. Her latest book, China: Fragile Superpower, was published this spring.