"Is America’s China Policy Too Hawkish?" An Interview With CWP Alum Jessica Chen Weiss

There’s a rare bipartisan consensus in Washington that China’s rise must be countered in the strongest way possible. Democrats and Republicans seemingly compete over who can be tougher on Beijing. The problem with the tone of the current debate, according to Cornell University professor and former State Department advisor Jessica Chen Weiss, is that policymakers are locked in an escalatory spiral. Anyone who seeks to diverge from the consensus is accused of having sympathy for the other side.

Weiss, a China specialist, worked on the State Department’s policy planning staff in 2021 and 2022. Since then, she has widely published her concerns, been cited in Foreign Policy articles, and been the subject of a New Yorker profile. Are her warnings valid? Is she accurately assessing the nature of China’s challenge? 

Is America’s China Policy Too Hawkish? - Jessica Chen Weiss on why she thinks competition with China is consuming U.S. foreign policy—and what the United States needs to do about it.

By Ravi Agrawal, the editor in chief of Foreign Policy. - https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/08/us-china-economic-competition-policy/ - Podcast of this discussion here: 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/foreign-policy-live/id1034003458?i=1000603579960

Jessica Chen Weiss is the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the Department of Government at Cornell University. From August 2021 to July 2022, she served as senior advisor to the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department on a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars (IAF-TIRS). Weiss is the author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (Oxford University Press, 2014). Her research appears in International Organization, China Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, and Review of International Political Economy, as well as in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Quarterly. Weiss was previously an assistant professor at Yale University and founded FACES, the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford University. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, she received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2008, where her dissertation won the 2009 American Political Science Association Award for best dissertation in international relations, law and politics. 

Photo Credit: https://pixabay.com/users/manuchi-1728328/