Challenges Facing a Biden Administration in Asia
With the rise of China in the Asia-Pacific region, the new Biden administration will face challenges in its response to the situation. Join us as Ambassador Jeffrey A. Bader, Senior Fellow of Foreign Policy in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution discusses the implications of the new Biden administration for the Asia-Pacific region, with a special focus on U.S.-China relations, policies and its impact on Japan.
The session will be moderated by Consul General Akira Muto, who, aside from his diplomatic career, was a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Watler H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Speakers:
Jeffrey Bader
Senior Fellow, John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution
From 2009 until 2011, Bader was special assistant to the president of the United States for national security affairs at the National Security Council. In that capacity, he was the principal advisor to President Obama on Asia.
Bader served from 2005 to 2009 as the director of the China Initiative and, subsequently, as the first director of the John L. Thornton China Center.
During his three decade career with the U.S. government, Bader was principally involved in U.S.-China relations at the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Office of the United States Trade Representative. In 2001, as assistant U.S. trade representative, he led the United States delegation in completing negotiations on the accession of China and Taiwan into the World Trade Organization.
Bader served as a Foreign Service officer in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Namibia, Zambia, Congo, and the United States Mission to the United Nations. During the 1990s, he was deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia; director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council; and director of the State Department’s Office of Chinese Affairs. He served as U.S. ambassador to Namibia from 1999 to 2001.
Bader is the author of "Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy," published in 2012 by Brookings Institution Press. He is president and sole proprietor of Jeffrey Bader LLC, which provides assistance to companies with interests in Asia.
Bader received a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a master’s and doctorate in European history from Columbia University. He speaks Chinese and French.
Consul General Akira Muto
Consul General Akira Muto graduated from the Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1985. Having served at the Embassies of Japan in Washington DC and Moscow, he held directorships for Free Trade Agreement & Economic Partnership, Intelligence & Analysis, Russian Affairs, and Foreign Policy Coordination between 2004 and 2012; and in 2012, he became Consul General of Japan in Boston. He served as Deputy Director General, European Affairs Bureau (Ambassador, 2014-15); and served in the National Security Secretariat (2015-16).
He was Minister, Embassy of Japan in the U.S. (Global Affiliate Visiting Scholar, Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University) (2018-19). He became Consul General of Japan in Los Angeles in 2019.
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