February 2014

Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt is Director of Asia-Pacific Programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

From 2008-2013, she established and managed the Beijing office of the International Crisis Group, engaging in research, analysis and promotion of policy prescriptions on the role of China in conflict areas around the world and its relations with neighboring countries.

Kleine-Ahlbrandt worked as an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from 2006 to 2007. Prior to that she worked for the United Nations for a decade where she focused on the African continent and served as Officer-in-Charge of the Asia-Pacific region. Previously, Kleine-Ahlbrandt was seconded by the U.S. Department of State to the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, investigated genocide and other human rights violations for the United Nations in Rwanda (1994-1995), and worked with the Legal Affairs Directorate of the Council of Europe.

Kleine-Ahlbrandt has written extensively on China’s foreign policy, Chinese views of the strategic environment, Sino-U.S. relations, Chinese assessments of the Iran nuclear issue, the Korean peninsula, maritime disputes in the East and South China Seas, China-Central Asian relations, China-Myanmar relations and China-Africa relations. Her writings have been published in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Le Monde, Die Zeit and the International Herald Tribune, as well as various edited volumes on Asian security. Kleine-Ahlbrandt is the author of a book on post-genocide Rwanda.

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, D.C. 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. In 1978, he participated in the secret negotiations that led to the establishment of U.S.-P.R.C. diplomatic relations. During a career focused on East Asia and the Soviet Union, Roy’s ambassadorial assignments included Singapore, China, and Indonesia. His final post with the State Department was as Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research. On retirement, he joined Kissinger Associates, Inc., a strategic consulting firm, before joining the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in September 2008 to head the newly created Kissinger Institute. In 2001, he received Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Award for Distinguished Public Service.

Stanley Rosen is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California (USC), specializing in Chinese politics and society. He was the Faculty Master of University Residential College at Bimkrant, an honors college for USC’s best incoming students, from 2011 to 2017. Rosen lived on campus for 29 years as a resident faculty member. He studied Chinese in Taiwan and Hong Kong and has traveled to mainland China around 65 times in the last 40 years. His courses range from Chinese politics and Chinese film to political change in Asia, East Asian societies, comparative politics, and politics and film in comparative perspective.

The author or editor of nine books and many articles, Rosen has written on such topics as the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese legal system, public opinion, youth, gender, human rights, and film and the media. He has been the editor (now co-editor) of Chinese Education and Society since 1983. His most recent books include Soft Power with Chinese Characteristics: China’s Campaign for Hearts and Minds (Routledge, 2020) (co-edited with Kingsley Edney and Ying Zhu); Chinese Politics: State, Society and the Market (Routledge, 2010) (co-edited with Peter Hays Gries); and Art, Politics and Commerce in Chinese Cinema (Hong Kong University Press, 2010) (co-edited with Ying Zhu). Ongoing projects include a study of the changing attitudes and behavior of Chinese youth and a study of Hollywood films in China and the prospects for Chinese films on the international market, particularly in the North America.

In addition to his academic activities at USC, Rosen has escorted thirteen delegations to China for the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (including American university presidents, professional associations, and Fulbright groups).

He is an affiliated research scholar at Beijing Normal University’s Research Institute for Chinese Culture and International Communications and was previously a member of the international advisory board of Shanghai University’s Center for Media Studies and the Humanities Studies Center of Zhongshan University (Taiwan). He has consulted for the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the United States Information Agency, the Los Angeles Public Defenders Office, and a number of private corporations, law firms, and U.S. government agencies.

Sophia Woodman is a sociologist who studies citizenship, human rights, social movements, and gender in contemporary China. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Her Ph.D. thesis, “Local citizenship and socialized governance—linking citizens and the state in rural and urban Tianjin, China,” is a study of daily interactions between citizens and state agents, showing how the local shapes people’s expectations about the state’s obligations towards them.

Her recent publications include: “Law, translation and voice: the transformation of a struggle for social justice in a Chinese village,” Critical Asian Studies 43, 2: 185-210, 2011 [PDF]; “Is there space for ‘genuine autonomy’ for Tibetan areas in the PRC’s system of Nationalities Regional Autonomy?” International Journal of Minority and Group Rights, 2010, Vol. 17: 137-186 (with Yash Ghai and Kelley Loper) [PDF]; and “Unused powers: autonomy legislation in the PRC”, Pacific Affairs 2009, 82, 1: 29-46 (with Yash Ghai). [PDF]