As China seeks to balance security concerns and financial considerations, a nation that has long espoused the principle of noninterference may find its foreign policy tested in coming months. What will be the challenges and opportunities for China in Afghanistan? What will the U.S. withdrawal mean for China’s role in the region and globally?
Laurel Miller is Director of the Asia Program at the International Crisis Group. She was U.S. deputy and then acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2013 to 2017.
Prior to joining Crisis Group, Miller was a senior foreign policy expert at the RAND Corporation, from 2017 to 2018 and 2009 to 2013. Her research and analysis at RAND covered a wide range of subjects including conflict resolution, democratization, institution-building, and anti-corruption in countries throughout the world. From 2013 to mid-2017, She was the deputy and then acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the U.S. Department of State.
During previous U.S. government service, Miller was Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Senior Advisor to the U.S. special envoy for the Balkans, and Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues. She was directly involved in peace negotiations in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia. Miller also served as Director for western hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council.
Miller was a senior expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where she focused on constitution-making, rule of law development, and transitional justice. She has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown. Earlier, Laurel practiced law with Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., and Brussels. She was an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. Miller is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Chicago Law School.
Miller has been widely interviewed by the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, NPR, PBS NewsHour, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and others. She has published commentaries in Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Times, The National Interest, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.
Miller edited and co-authored an extensive study of constitution-making processes, “Framing the State in Times of Transition” (USIP Press, 2010). Her RAND publications include “Envisioning a Comprehensive Peace Agreement for Afghanistan” (2019), “Democratization in the Arab World” (2012), “Building a More Resilient Haitian State” (2010), and “Overcoming Obstacles to Peace” (2013).
Amanda Hsiao is Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for China. She focuses on conflicts in which China plays an important role, and developments in China’s foreign policy that relate to conflict prevention and resolution. Prior to Crisis Group, Hsiao established and managed the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue’s China program in Beijing, overseeing projects related to the South China Sea, U.S.-China relations, and China’s evolving approach to conflict mediation. Before her time in Asia, Amanda was a researcher in South Sudan, where she worked for a variety of organizations.
Andrea Ghiselli is an Assistant Professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University. He is also the head of research of the TOChina Hub’s ChinaMed Project. His research revolves around Chinese foreign policy and China’s role in the wider Mediterranean region, with a special focus on Sino-Middle Eastern relations. He is the author of the book Protecting China’s Interests Overseas: Securitization and Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 2021).
This short story was written 20 years ago but never published. It is the first piece of original fiction to appear on ChinaFile since our launch in 2013. In a postscript, author Zha Jianying explains that when she unearthed the story earlier this year, she felt it resonated with the current moment in U.S.-China relations.
In an article for The European Institute for Chinese Studies (EURICS), University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Law and Public Affairs Mark Sidel assesses how the Foreign NGO Law framework functioned during the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking at donations made through both the representative office and temporary activity mechanisms, Sidel concludes that the structures set in place over the last four years held up under crisis conditions and allowed international funding to flow in for COVID-related causes.
The European Institute for Chinese Studies (EURICS) is an institute working to strengthen European research and analysis capacities on China. It works to enhance cooperation at the core of a network of European research centers and think tanks with focusing on Chinese studies, and to help forging a common European understanding of China.
EURICS supports studies on ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary China, from a double perspective, both typological and diachronic, and on current dynamics of Chinese society, economy, and culture. Inspired by the model of the Institutes for Advanced Study in Human and Social Sciences, EURICS welcomes and hosts high-level sinologist scholars for a period ranging from three to ten months. No restrictions apply regarding the candidate’s research theme and nationality.
Mark Sidel is Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Doyle-Bascom endowment) and consultant for Asia at the Washington-based International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. He has written widely on the regulation of civil society in China, India, and Vietnam. He brings together academic knowledge and field experience. He served with the Ford Foundation in Beijing, Hanoi, Bangkok, and New Delhi. His volume on the Chinese Overseas NGO Law and framework and China’s relationships with the overseas nonprofit community is forthcoming from Brookings Press.
Andrew M. Fischer is Associate Professor of Social Policy and Development Studies at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, part of Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is also the Scientific Director of CERES, The Dutch Research School for International Development; co-editor of the journal Development and Change; and founding editor of the Oxford University Press book series Critical Frontiers of International Development Studies. His latest book, Poverty as Ideology (Zed, 2018), was awarded the International Studies in Poverty Prize by the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) and Zed Books and, as part of the award, is fully open access.
Trained in demography and development economics, Fischer works extensively on poverty, inequality, social policy, and international development. He earned his Ph.D. in Development Studies from the London School of Economics (LSE) for his research on China’s regional development strategies in western China and their impact on ethnic minorities, principally Tibetans, but also Uyghurs and other minorities. He has written two books on this topic, the second being The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China: A Study in the Economics of Marginalization (Lexington Books, 2014), as well as articles in leading journals such as Population and Development Review and China Quarterly.
More generally, Fischer has been involved in the field of international development for over 30 years. Prior to his Ph.D., he spent seven years living with Tibetan refugees in India, and he lived in Western China for two years during and after his Ph.D. Parallel to his ongoing research on western China, he won a prestigious European Research Council grant for work on the political economy of externally financing social policy in developing countries (Aiding Social Protection), which he led from 2015 to 2021.
