U.S.-China Relations in an Era of Strategic Competition: A Conversation with Mark Lambert

The CSIS Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics and the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions are pleased to present a special conversation featuring Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Mark Lambert, who oversees the Office of China Policy Coordination at the U.S. 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 will be allowed.

For information on parking and directions, please visit here.

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 and U.S.-China commercial relations, Kennedy has been traveling to China for 35 years. His specific areas of expertise include industrial policy, technology innovation, business lobbying, U.S.-China commercial relations, and global governance. His articles have appeared in a wide array of policy, popular, and academic venues, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and China Quarterly. He is author of (with Wang Jisi) Breaking the Ice: The Role of Scholarly Exchange in Stabilizing U.S.-China Relations (CSIS, 2023), The Fat Tech Dragon: Benchmarking China’s Innovation Drive (CSIS, 2017), and The Business of Lobbying in China(Harvard University Press, 2005); and editor of China’s Uneven High-Tech Drive: Implications for the United States (CSIS, 2020) and Global Governance and China: The Dragon’s Learning Curve (Routledge, 2018). 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 a PhD in political science from George Washington University and his MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.