Baker Institute event to mark 30 years of US-China ties

Baker Institute event to mark 30 years of US-China ties

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

The United States and the People’s Republic of China established full diplomatic relations 30 years ago. To mark the event, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy will hold a daylong conference April 3 featuring senior statesmen and distinguished scholars from both countries to reflect on past accomplishments and to discuss predictions and recommendations for the future.

Speakers will include former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker III and China’s Ambassador to the U.S. Zhou Wenzhong.

This conference, titled “America and China: The Next 30 Years,” is the fourth since 2004 held by the Baker Institute and the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS).

Rice University President David Leebron will deliver the welcoming remarks at 8:30 a.m. Then Baker will introduce Kissinger, whose speech will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Yang Jiemian, president of the SIIS, will introduce Zhou at 9:30 a.m. Zhou’s speech will also be followed by a question-and-answer session. Both Q-and-A sessions will be moderated by Edward Djerejian, founding director of the Baker Institute.

Later in the day, panel discussions will focus on U.S. and Chinese interests in the Middle East, overall Sino-U.S. relations and nonproliferation policy.

The conference will be held in Baker Hall’s Doré Commons.

The event will be webcast. To watch the conference live, go to http://www.bakerinstitute.org/events/america-and-china-the-next-thirty-years and click on the “webcast” icon.

Support for this conference was provided by Continental Airlines.