CHINA Town Hall: Melanie Hart, Yasheng Huang, and Ely Ratner

George Stephanopoulos

George Stephanopoulos is ABC News’ chief anchor. He also serves as anchor of Good Morning America and anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos. As chief anchor, Mr. Stephanopoulos leads the network’s coverage on all major live events and breaking news around the world.

Mr. Stephanopoulos has conducted interviews with a wide range of subjects – including former FBI Director James Comey, President Trump, former President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Russian Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, four former United States Supreme Court Justices to Mark Zuckerberg, Jason Collins, Lady Gaga, George Clooney, and Reese Witherspoon. For more than two decades his range and expertise have played a pivotal role at the network, garnering three Emmys, a DuPont, three Edward R. Murrows, and two Cronkite Awards. Mr. Stephanopoulos joined ABC News in 1997 as an analyst for This Week.

Prior to joining ABC News, he served in the Clinton administration as the senior advisor to the president for policy and strategy. He is the author of All Too Human, a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. Mr. Stephanopoulos received his master’s degree in theology from Balliol College, Oxford University, England, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University and graduated summa cum laude in political science. Mr. Stephanopoulos and his wife, Alexandra Wentworth, have two daughters, Elliott and Harper.

Stephen A. Orlins

Steve Orlins has been president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations since 2005. Prior to that, he was the managing director of Carlyle Asia and the chairman of the board of Taiwan Broadband Communications, one of Taiwan’s largest cable television and high speed internet providers. Prior to joining Carlyle, Mr. Orlins was a senior advisor to AEA Investors Inc., a New York based leveraged buyout firm, with responsibility for AEA’s business activities throughout Asia.

From 1983 to 1991, Mr. Orlins was with the investment banking firm of Lehman Brothers where he was a Managing Director from 1985 to 1991. From 1987 to 1990, he served as President of Lehman Brothers Asia. Based in Hong Kong, he supervised over 150 professionals with offices in Hong Kong, Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Manila and Singapore. Prior to joining Lehman Brothers, Mr. Orlins practiced law with Coudert Brothers and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York, Hong Kong and Beijing.

From 1976 to 1979, Mr. Orlins served in the Office of the Legal Advisor of the United States Department of State, first in the Office of the Assistant Legal Advisor for Political-Military Affairs and then for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. While in that office, he was a member of the legal team that helped establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.

Mr. Orlins is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and earned his law degree at Harvard Law School. He speaks Mandarin Chinese and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 1992, Mr. Orlins was the Democratic nominee for the United States Congress in New York’s Third Congressional District.

Melanie Hart

Dr. Melanie Hart is a senior fellow and director for China policy at the Center for American Progress, an independent nonpartisan policy institute based in Washington, D.C. She leads the Center’s work on China and U.S.-China relations. Her most recent work focuses on developing a comprehensive U.S. strategy toward China, analyzing the domestic political factors driving Chinese foreign policy in the Xi Jinping era, tracking Chinese industrial policy in the energy and information technology sectors, and assessing China’s intentions toward the global order.

Dr. Hart has worked on Chinese domestic and foreign policy issues for nearly two decades. Before joining American Progress, she worked in the information technology sector helping American businesses understand China’s emerging industrial policies. She also worked as a consultant on the digital economy for the Aspen Institute and on China policy issues for the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and other policy and business advisory organizations. Dr. Hart currently serves on the board of the American Mandarin Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the professional development of current and future stewards of the U.S.-China relationship.

Dr. Hart has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, San Diego, and a B.A. from Texas A&M University. She studied Chinese at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing and has worked as a Chinese-English translator for Caijing Magazine.

Yasheng Huang

Yasheng Huang is Epoch Foundation professor of international management and faculty director of action learning at Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Between 2013 and 2017, he served as an associate dean in charge of MIT Sloan’s global partnership programs and its action learning initiatives. His previous appointments include faculty positions at the University of Michigan and at Harvard Business School.

Dr. Huang is currently involved in research projects in four broad areas: 1) a book project on “The Nature of the Chinese State,” 2) collaboration with researchers at Tsinghua University to create a complete database on historical technological inventions in China,  3) as a co-PI  in “Food Safety in China: A Systematic Risk Management Approach” (supported by Walmart Foundation, 2016-), and 4) research on venture finance, production of scientific knowledge, work of the future in China.  He has published numerous articles in academic journals and in media and 11 books in English and Chinese.

At MIT Sloan School, Professor Huang founded and runs China Lab and India Lab, which have provided low-cost consulting services to over 360 small and medium enterprises  in China and India. Between 2015 and 2018, he ran a program in Yunnan province  to train small and medium women entrepreneurs (funded by Goldman Sachs Foundation). He has held or received prestigious fellowships such as National Fellowship at Stanford University and Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Fellowship. He was named by National Asia Research Program as one of the most outstanding scholars in the United States conducting research on issues of policy importance to the United States. He is or has been a fellow at the Center for China in the World Economy at Tsinghua University, a research fellow at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, a fellow at William Davidson Institute at Michigan Business School, and a World Economic Forum Fellow. He has served as a consultant at World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and OECD and is serving on a number of advisory and corporate boards of non-profit and for-profit organizations.

Ely Ratner

Ely Ratner is the executive vice president and director of studies at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), where he is a member of the executive team and responsible for managing the Center’s research agenda and staff.

Dr. Ratner served from 2015 to 2017 as the deputy national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, and from 2011 to 2012 in the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs at the State Department. He also previously worked in the U.S. Senate as a professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and in the office of Senator Joe Biden. Outside of government, Dr. Ratner has worked as the Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a senior fellow and deputy director of the Asia-Pacific security program at CNAS, and as an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation.

Dr. Ratner has testified before Congress and published widely on U.S.-China relations and U.S. national security strategy in Asia. His commentary and research have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Politico, The Atlantic, The Washington Quarterly, The National Interest, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, and The Chinese Journal of International Politics.

Dr. Ratner received his B.A. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.