The South China Sea is a region of immense geopolitical importance, with many different countries advancing competing territorial and maritime claims in a vital economic and strategic waterway. China’s maritime claims have been a source of tension and conflict with other nations, particularly those Southeast Asian nations whose maritime rights under the international law of the sea overlap with China’s maritime claims. 

The China Program at Shornstein APARC brings you this expert session, featuring the State Department Assistant Legal Adviser Robert Harris, who will examine China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea, including the evolution and legal basis for these claims and their implications for regional security and stability. 

We will also explore the role of international law in resolving disputes in the region and how actions by the international community, including freedom of navigation exercises, can help articulate and preserve the international law of the sea.
 

Robert Harris is Assistant Legal Adviser for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, providing legal advice to policymakers on legal issues related to U.S. foreign policy in the Asia and Pacific region. As a senior career lawyer at the Department of State, he has served as legal adviser and as head of delegation to more than 100 different bilateral and multilateral negotiations on a wide array of issues and international agreements, including international migration, trade in services and commercial air services, international law enforcement (e.g., counterterrorism, drug trafficking, and the extradition of fugitives), maritime boundary delimitation, transboundary watercourses, the international law of the sea, including marine pollution and ocean dumping, global environment protection (including control of hazardous chemicals, biological diversity, and international conservation), sustainable development, international human rights and refugees, nuclear liability and the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. He is a lecturer of law on international law and the law of the sea at Columbia Law School. He is a graduate of Cornell University (AB History), the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (MPA), and Stanford Law School (JD).  

Laura Stone, a member of the U.S. Department of State, is the Inaugural China Policy Fellow for the 2022-2023 academic year at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). She was formerly Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Maldives, the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for China and Mongolia, the Director of the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs, and the Director of the Economic Policy Office in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs. She served in Hanoi, Beijing, Bangkok, Tokyo, the Public Affairs Bureau, the Pentagon Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. While at APARC, she is conducting research with the China Program on contemporary China affairs and U.S.-China policy.

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Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions is pleased to present a special conversation featuring Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Mark Lambert, who oversees the Office of China Policy Coordination at the US State Department. Lambert will be speaking on US-China Relations in an Era of Strategic Competition. This event is in-person only and will be off the record.

Mark Lambert’s presentation begins at 4:30 pm on Friday, February 16th, followed by a Q&A moderated by Scott Kennedy, CSIS Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics. You are invited to a welcome reception at 4:00 pm.

Registration is required for admission. No walk-ins.

No audio, video recording or photography will be permitted.  Please note, this event is closed to the media. 

About the Speaker
 

Mark Lambert is State Department China Coordinator and Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs. He oversees the Office of China Coordination and the Office of Taiwan Coordination. Mark has extensive experience in China, cross-Strait, and Asia Pacific affairs. He most recently served as Deputy Assistant Secretary with responsibility for Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands.  Earlier he established the International Organizations Bureau’s office aimed at protecting UN integrity from authoritarianism. As Special Envoy for North Korean Affairs, he participated in negotiations with the DPRK and devised and implemented a global pressure campaign to enforce UN Security Council Resolutions. As Director of the Office of Korean Affairs he helped shape the response to ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests conducted by North Korea. While Political Counselor in Hanoi he helped to devise a South China Sea maritime strategy and led a team that won recognition for dramatically improving U.S. relations with Vietnam. He served twice in Beijing, most recently managing U.S. political military affairs with China. Previously, he was named the State Department’s human rights officer of the year for devising a strategy to release Chinese political prisoners and promote religious freedom. He has served as Political Military officer in Bangkok and Tokyo and as a science and technology officer on the State Department’s Japan Desk. He was a weapons inspector in Iraq. His first tour was in Bogota, Colombia, during the era of Pablo Escobar. He received a Meritorious Presidential Rank Award for helping to design and implement a plan to elect the leader of the World Intellectual Property Organization. He has been awarded for efforts bringing the United States and Vietnam closer together, for his voluntary efforts responding to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, for helping to shape the U.S. response to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, and for his work helping to resolve the 2001 EP-3 crisis involving a U.S. naval aircraft forced down on China’s Hainan Island. He has studied Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Spanish. He is married to Laura Stone, a senior State Department official. They have two daughters.

Scott Kennedy is senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). A leading authority on Chinese economic policy, Kennedy has been traveling to China for over 30 years. His specific areas of expertise include industrial policy, technology innovation, business lobbying, U.S.-China commercial relations, and global governance. From 2000 to 2014, Kennedy was a professor at Indiana University (IU), where he established the Research Center for Chinese Politics & Business and was the founding academic director of IU’s China Office. Kennedy received his PhD in political science from George Washington University, his MA in China studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and his BA from the University of Virginia.

Parking & Directions

Parking meters are enforced Monday - Friday 8 AM to 4 PM, unless otherwise posted.

The event will take place in the Koret-Taube Conference Center located within the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building. The closest visitor parking to the Gunn-SIEPR building is:

• Galvez Lot, located across from the Stadium lot
• Track House Visitor Lot at the corner of Galvez Street and Campus Drive
• Knight Management Parking structure on Campus Drive East (this is an underground option)

Please visit the this website for more detailed parking options and directions to the venue.

Questions? Contact Heather Rahimi at hrahimi@stanford.edu

Please note, registration for this event is now closed, we have reached capacity, space is limited. 

Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions and China’s Global Sharp Power Project at the Hoover Institution are pleased to present a special lecture featuring Professor Minxin Pei who will be speaking on How Does China Spy on Its People? and his newly released book, The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China. This is an in-person event. 

Contrary to the widespread perception that advanced technology enables the Chinese state to maintain full-spectrum surveillance of its people, evidence collected from local yearbooks shows that the backbone of China's surveillance state consists of close bureaucratic coordination among security agencies, an extensive network of informants and labor-intensive surveillance tactics.   This system is made possible and run effectively by the party's Leninist organizational structure.  The hi-tech surveillance apparatus, which China began to construct in the late 1990s and did not become fully operational until probably around 2010, has given the ruling Communist Party a complementary, but not substitutive, tool.  The Chinese regime’s surveillance capabilities, unrivaled by other autocracies in history, may be one explanation why rapid economic development has not led to democratization.  Growth since the early 1990s has produced abundant resources for the regime to expand its labor-intensive network of surveillance, refine surveillance tactics, and adopt new technologies.  Its powerful surveillance state prevents the emergence of opposition despite the rapid growth of the middle class and other elements that can potentially threaten the party's hold on power.  Economic development alone is unlikely to promote democracy because an autocratic regime can take advantage of the growing resources to strengthen its capacity for preventive repression.  Economic failure, not success, is far more likely to trigger regime transition.

About the Speaker
 

Minxin Pei is Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. His areas of expertise include China, comparative politics, the Pacific Rim, U.S./Asia relations, and U.S./China relations. Pei has been a Robert McNamara Fellow at the World Bank (1994-1995), Edward Teller National Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University (1994-1995), and Olin Faculty Fellow at The Olin Foundation (1997-1998). Pei has written three books including “China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay” (Harvard University Press, 2016), “China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy'' (Harvard University Press, 2006), and “From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union” (Harvard University Press, 1994). Pei earned a B.A. from Shanghai International Studies University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Co-sponsored by:
 

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Questions? Contact Tina Shi at shiying@stanford.edu