February 2014

Chen Weihua is a columnist and chief Washington correspondent for China Daily and the Deputy Editor of China Daily USA. He was a Knight Fellow at Stanford University from 2004 to 2005, a World Press Institute Fellow based at Macalester College in Minnesota in 1998, and a Freedom Forum Fellow at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1993-1994. Chen joined China Daily in 1987 after graduating from Fudan University in Shanghai with degrees in Microbiology and International Journalism. He has appeared on CCTV, ABC, NPR, KQED, and talked to groups such as the Brookings board delegation visiting China, Indian Young Entrepreneurs Delegation, and MBA students from U.S. and U.K. universities.

Chas W. Freeman, Jr. is a visiting scholar at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. He is the former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (1993-1994), Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (1989-1992), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (1986–1989), and Chargé D’affaires at Bangkok (1984-1986) and Beijing (1981-1984). He served as Vice Chair of the Atlantic Council (1996-2008), Co-Chair of the United States China Policy Foundation (1996-2009), President of the Middle East Policy Council (1997-2009), and Chair of the Committee for the Republic (2003-2020). He was the principal American interpreter during President Nixon’s path-breaking 1972 visit to Beijing, the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica article on diplomacy, and the author of America’s Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East; Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige; America’s Misadventures in the Middle East;< em>The Diplomat’s Dictionary; and Arts of Power: Statecraft and Diplomacy. He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School who studied at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and National Taichung University of Education. A compendium of his speeches is available at online.

Charles A. Laughlin has a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese Language and Literature from the University of Minnesota, a Master of Arts, Master of Philosophy, and Ph.D in Chinese literature from Columbia University, and is currently Weedon Chair Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of Virginia. He has published extensively on Chinese literature from the 1920s-1960s, including two books: Chinese Reportage: The Aesthetics of Historical Experience (Duke, 2002) and The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity (Hawai’i, 2008). Laughlin also edited Contested Modernities in Chinese Literature (Palgrave, 2005). His current research is on discourses of desire in Chinese revolutionary literature.