Teleconference on the Obama-Xi Summit with Sheena Greitens and Stapleton Roy

Observers on both sides of the Pacific closely watched Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the United States, taking place September 22-25. (He also visited the United Nations, leaving the United States on September 28.) On September 28, 2015, the National Committee convened a discussion with Sheena Greitens, assistant professor of political science at the University of Missouri, and Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, distinguished scholar and founding director emeritus of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In an on-the-record teleconference moderated by NCUSCR President Steve Orlins, the two reflected on Xi’s trip and its implications for U.S.-China relations. A question and answer session followed the speakers’ remarks.

Sheena Chestnut Greitens

Sheena Chestnut Greitens is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri and a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for East Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. She is also an asociate in research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and a Public Intellectuals Program (PIP) fellow with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
 
Greitens’ research focuses on East Asia, security, and non-democratic politics.  Her work has been published in academic journals and edited volumes in English, Chinese, and Korean, and has appeared in Newsweek, Foreign Policy, The International Herald Tribune, and The New York Times.  She previously held positions at the U.S. Department of State’s Policy Planning Staff, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and Oxford University Press, and had fellowships at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, the Mansfield Foundation-Korea Foundation’s Korea program, the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
 
Greitens earned her Ph.D from Harvard University. She holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.Phil from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar.  

Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy

Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy retired from the Foreign Service in January 2001 after a career spanning 45 years with the U.S. Department of State.  A fluent Chinese speaker, Ambassador Roy spent much of his career in East Asia, where his assignments included Bangkok (twice), Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing (twice), Singapore, and Jakarta.  He also specialized in Soviet affairs and served in Moscow at the height of the Cold War.  Ambassador Roy served as ambassador three times: in Singapore (1984-86), the People’s Republic of China (1991-95), and Indonesia (1996-99).  In 1996, he was promoted to the rank of career ambassador, the highest rank in the Foreign Service. Ambassador Roy’s final post with the State Department was as assistant secretary for Intelligence and Research.
 
In January 2001, Ambassador Roy joined Kissinger Associates, Inc., a strategic consulting firm, as managing director.  For several years he was director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; he now serves as its distinguished scholar and founding director, emeritus.
 
Ambassador Roy was born in Nanjing, China of American missionary parents.  In 1956, he graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, where he majored in history and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.  He has done post-graduate study on Mongolian language, history, and culture at the University of Washington, attended the U.S. Army Russian Institute in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and is a distinguished graduate of the National War College.