Part 1 “America’s Role in the World”

Sergey Radchenko (Johns Hopkins)

Sergey Radchenko is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Radchenko is a native of Sakhalin Island, Russia, and was educated in the US, Hong Kong, and the UK, where he received his PhD at the London School of Economics. Before he joined the Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), he worked and lived in Mongolia, China, and Wales. He has written extensively on the Cold War, nuclear history, and on Russian and Chinese foreign and security policies. He has served as a Global Fellow and a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre and as the Zi Jiang Distinguished Professor at East China Normal University (Shanghai). Radchenko’s books include Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962-1967 (2009) and Unwanted Visionaries: The Soviet Failure in Asia at the End of the Cold War (2013). His most recent book is To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power (2024).

Susan Shirk (University of California, San Diego)

Susan Shirk is a research professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and director emeritus of its 21st Century China Center. She received her BA in Political Science at Mount Holyoke College, MA in Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkley, and her PhD in Political Science from MIT. Shirk is one of the most influential experts working on US-China relations and Chinese politics. She is also director emeritus of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). From 1997-2000, Shirk served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, with responsibility for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia. Shirk co-chairs a task force of China experts that issued its second report “Course Correction: Toward an Effective and Sustainable China Policy,” in February 2019. She is also co-chair of the UC San Diego Forum on US-China Relations, the first ongoing high-level forum focused entirely on the US-China relationship. Shirk’s many books include China: Fragile Superpower (2008), which helped frame the policy debate on China in the US and other countries, Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies in China (1982); The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China (1993); How China Opened its Door (1994); and her edited book, Changing Media, Changing China (2010). Her most recent book is Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise (2022).