The Changing Geopolitics of East Asia

The 21st Century China Program and Fudan-UC Center on Contemporary China host the fourth annual Robert F. Ellsworth Memorial Lecture on the changing geopolitics in East Asia.

Registration required.

Speaker: Ambassador J. Stapleton (Stape) Roy, Distinguished Scholar and Founding Director Emeritus, Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Stapleton Roy's ambassadorial assignments included Singapore, China and Indonesia. In this talk, he will discuss the implications for the U.S. of the gradual erosion in its air and sea dominance in the Western Pacific caused by China's rapid military modernization. He will also examine the factors that limit China's ability to dominate the region, including the difficulties China's leaders encounter in seeking to preserve the essentials of an authoritarian system in a country that is too open to the outside world, both politically and economically, to make this feasible over time.

Bio:
Ambassador J. Stapleton (Stape) Roy is a distinguished scholar and founding director emeritus of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. Stape Roy was born in China and spent much of his youth there during the upheavals of World War II and the communist revolution, where he watched the battle for Shanghai from the roof of the Shanghai American School. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service immediately after graduating from Princeton in 1956, retiring 45 years later with the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the service. Read his full bio online.