Global Affairs: Listen, Learn, Engage | Online

About this event

The Global Affairs Forum Series brings together scholars, policymakers, and experienced professionals to explore important issues shaping the world today. Each session features a guest speaker who offers insight into a critical global topic, explaining what is at stake, why it matters, and the choices facing policymakers and the public. Q&A to follow. Program recordings are available online. --------------------------------------------------------------- Topic "What China Wants" Speaker Jessica Chen Weiss is the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and the inaugural faculty director of the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs (ACF) at SAIS. From August 2021 to July 2022, she served as senior advisor to the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department on a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars (IAF-TIRS). Weiss is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis and previously the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Cornell University and an assistant professor at Yale University. She founded FACES, the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford University. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, she received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. Her new book, What China Wants: And What It Means For the World (Oxford University Press, February 2027), looks at how domestic politics and regime insecurity shape China’s foreign policy ambitions, prospects for peaceful coexistence, and the shifting global order. Weiss is the author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (Oxford University Press, 2014). Her research appears in International Organization, China Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, and Review of International Political Economy. With commentary in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Los Angeles Times, and the Ezra Klein show, Weiss was profiled by the New Yorker and named one of Prospect Magazine's Top Thinkers for 2024. Suggested readings: What China Wants: And What It Means For the World by Jessica Chen Weiss (Oxford University Press, February 2027), "For Trump and Xi, There Is Only One Way Forward," The New York Times, September 23, 2026. "How China Found Its Most Potent Weapon: The Real History of Beijing's Rare Earth Dominance," Foreign Affairs, September/October 2026 (with Gloria Xiong) Register for the Zoom link