Monday, May 11, 2015 | 5:30 PM EDT - 7:00 PM EDT
Dorsey & Whitney |, New York, NY
No country feels China’s rise more deeply than Japan. Through intricate case studies of visits by politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, conflicts at the East China Sea boundary, concerns about food safety, and strategies of island defense, Sheila Smith explores the policy issues testing the Japanese government as it tries to navigate its relationship with an advancing China. She finds that Japan’s interactions with China extend far beyond the negotiations between diplomats to include a broad array of social actors intent on influencing the Sino-Japanese relationship. At a National Committee event on May 11, 2015 in New York City, Sheila Smith discussed her book Intimate Rivals and the implications of the Sino-Japanese relationship on U.S.-China relations.
Sheila Smith
Sheila Smith, an expert on Japanese politics and foreign policy, is a senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She is the author of Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (Columbia University Press, 2015) and Japan’s New Politics and the U.S.-Japan Alliance (Council on Foreign Relations, June 2014). Her current research focuses on how geostrategic change in Asia shapes Japan’s strategic choices. In fall 2014, Dr. Smith began a new project on Northeast Asian nationalisms and alliance management.
Dr. Smith is a regular contributor to the CFR blog Asia Unbound, and frequent contributor to major media outlets in the United States and Asia. She joined CFR from the East-West Center in 2007, where she directed a multinational research team in a cross-national study of the domestic politics of the U.S. military presence in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. She was a visiting scholar at Keio University in 2007-08, where she researched Japan’s foreign policy towards China, supported by the Abe Fellowship. Dr. Smith has been a visiting researcher at two leading Japanese foreign and security policy think tanks, the Japan Institute of International Affairs and the Research Institute for Peace and Security, and at the University of Tokyo and the University of the Ryukyus.
Dr. Smith is vice chair of the U.S. advisors to the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Exchange (CULCON), a bi-national advisory panel of government officials and private sector members. She is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She earned her MA and PhD degrees in political science from Columbia University.