Lewis named Asia Society associate fellow

Lewis named Asia Society associate fellow

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

Steven Lewis, fellow in Asian Studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, has been invited to become an associate fellow of the Asia Society.

LEWIS

The Asia Society is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization “dedicated to strengthening relationships and deepening understanding among the peoples of Asia and the United States.” It was founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller III. The Society has offices in Hong Kong, Houston, Los Angeles, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai and Washington, D.C.

Lewis will be one of about 40 non-resident associate fellows from the U.S. and around the world. He will serve a renewable three-year term.

“The Asia Society is trying to stimulate public discussion about pressing contemporary affairs affecting the U.S. and Asia,” Lewis explained. “Toward that end, they have formed a diverse pool of commentators from prestigious American research universities and public policy think tanks. I’m honored to be included in this group, and happy to have the opportunity to make our Asia research at Rice and the Baker Institute available to national and international media, government agencies and NGOs.”

Lewis’ role at the Asia Society supports President David Leebron’s Vision for the Second Century, which calls for fostering “collaborative relationships with other institutions to leverage our resources.”

The invitation to join the Asia Society coincided with Lewis’ publication of an essay, titled “U.S.-China Strategic Relations, Energy Supply and Conservation Policy: Untapped Opportunities for Cooperation among Local Government, Industry and Academia.” The essay appeared in an omnibus study published in March by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions called “For Security’s Sake: Can the United States Help Petroleum Rich Nations Avoid the Resource Curse.”

Leveraging research for better policies

In the essay, Lewis argued that the U.S. should leverage the many successful collaborative research ties between local governments, companies and universities in the U.S. and China to develop more comprehensive, coordinated energy demand-reduction policies.

Lewis explained the challenges facing the United States as it competes with China for global sources of energy while looking for ways to curtail corruption and mismanagement in resource-rich developing nations. China’s rapidly expanding economy, coupled with its relatively small domestic petroleum reserves, made it a net oil importer in 1993. Although China consumed only about one-third of what the U.S. consumed in 2005, that figure is expected to grow.

Despite the competition for dwindling resources, Lewis maintained that the circumstances also present “important opportunities for cooperation, particularly in demand-reduction and conservation policies.”

He urged United States and other major oil-consuming nations to “leverage the opportunities for international cooperation in demand-reduction measures posed by China’s uniquely decentralized transition economy.”

Lewis’ essay can be found at http://www.env.duke.edu/institute/security_report.pdf.