37th Annual Membership Meeting
Speaker Biographies
Welcome Remarks
John Frisbie
The US-China Business Council
John Frisbie, president of the US-China Business Council (USCBC) since November 2004, has more than 25 years of experience in business and government relations with China, including nearly 10 years living and working in Beijing.
Frisbie started his career with the USCBC in 1986, first working in USCBC's Washington, DC, office, then as director of China Operations in Beijing from 1988 to 1993. He joined the General Electric Co. (GE) in 1993 as director for Business Development in China for the company's diverse set of businesses and then moved to Singapore to assume Asia-wide positions for two GE business units.
Frisbie repatriated to the United States in 2000, joining the trade consulting practice established by former Secretary of Commerce Mickey Kantor at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP.
Frisbie's China background includes joint venture negotiations, trade and investment consulting, policy analysis and advocacy, US and PRC government relations, and media relations. He has spoken at numerous conferences and events and authored reports and articles in the China Business Review, USCBC's bimonthly magazine, and in other journals such as Current History, as well as opinion articles in publications such as the Financial Times and Journal of Commerce.
Frisbie received his BA and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. He received several National Resource Fellowships for language study and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. He, his wife, young son, and daughter live in Bethesda, Maryland, and Stowe, Vermont.
US-China Relations: Are We Past the Frictions?
Harry Harding
University of Virginia
Harry Harding is dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and courtesy professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. Harding was a faculty member at Swarthmore College from 1970-71 and at Stanford University from 1971-83. He then took positions as senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution from 1983-94, dean of the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs from 1995-2005, director of Research and Analysis at Eurasia Group from 2005-07, and professor of International Affairs at George Washington University from 2005-09. In spring 2009, Harding was visiting professor of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong.
Harding's major publications include The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know (co-edited with Francine Frankel, 2004); A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972 (1992); Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955: A Joint Reassessment of a Critical Debate (co-edited with Yuan Ming, 1989); China's Second Revolution: Reform After Mao (1987); China's Foreign Relations in the 1980s (editor, 1984); and Organizing China: The Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949-1976 (1981).
Harding is vice chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Asia Foundation, director of the Atlantic Council of the United States and of the National Committee on US-China Relations, member of the Board of Governors of the Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Harding received the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching from Stanford University in 1975.
Harding received his BA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University and his MA and PhD in Political Science from Stanford University.
China's Economy: Boom or Slowdown?
Pieter Bottelier
Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
Pieter Bottelier is an economist and China scholar and has authored many articles on China's economy. He is a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and has served as senior adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies since 1999. He was an adjunct lecturer at Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government from 2001 to 2003 and at Georgetown University in 2004. He is also a senior advisor on China to the Conference Board Inc.
Bottelier worked at the World Bank from 1970 to 1998, where he held various positions. He served as senior advisor to the vice president for East Asia (1997-98), chief of the World Bank's Resident Mission in Beijing (1993-97), and consecutively as director for Latin America and North Africa (1987-93), division chief for Mexico (1983-87), and resident chief economist in Jakarta, Indonesia (1979-83). He also had various assignments as desk economist for East- and West-African countries (1970-79).
Prior to his career at the World Bank, Bottelier taught at the University of Amsterdam (1964-65), served as advisor to Zambia's Ministry of Finance (1965-67), and acted as chief economist and marketing director of a Zambian state-owned copper company.
Bottelier received his education at the University of Amsterdam and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Commercial Environment in China
Julie Walton
The US-China Business Council
Julie Walton is chief representative of the US-China Business Council's (USCBC) Shanghai office. She has worked at USCBC since 2001 in a variety of roles, serving previously as head of the organization's Business Advisory Services at USCBC's main office in Washington, DC, before relocating to Shanghai. Walton provides focused research to USCBC member companies on regulatory and operational issues, helps develop advocacy strategies on commercial policy issues, and leads programs on best practices for emerging business topics. Walton's recent research focus areas include trends in China's industrial and western development policies, energy and environmental technologies, government procurement, and innovation policy.
Prior to joining USCBC, Walton taught foreign trade at Tianjin University of Science and Technology. From 1997-99 she worked at USCBC as a publications assistant while completing her master's degree.
Julie earned her MA in East Asian Studies from George Washington University and her BA in History from Ohio University.
Coming Out of the Recession: The HR Landscape in China
Monica Lynn Debiak
Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP
Monica Lynn Debiak is an associate in Paul Hastings' international employment practice, where she represents corporations in all aspects of international employment law. Debiak has experience in a wide range of employment counseling, including local application of global codes of conduct, hiring and terminations, non-compete agreements, discrimination and harassment, leaves of absence, wage and hour laws, global mobility and immigration issues, labor management relations, and litigation avoidance strategies. She has assisted numerous clients to create employment manuals, codes of conduct, employment contracts, training and tuition assistance agreements, and separation and settlement agreements. Debiak conducts human resources due diligence for merger and acquisition transactions and trains employees on workplace anti-harassment, diversity, and compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. She also represents international clients in federal and state court employment litigation and administrative and agency proceedings.
Debiak has written on international employment law matters, including "Navigating Some Key Provisions in China's New Labor Contract Law" (China Law and Practice, Aug 2007) and "Preparing Your Business for a Pandemic" (Bloomberg Law Reports-Health Law, 2009 Year in Review).
Keynote Panel: The Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) and Its Aftermath
David Loevinger
US Department of the Treasury
David Loevinger is the US Treasury Department's executive secretary and senior coordinator for China Affairs and the S&ED. Loevinger served as Treasury's minister counselor for Financial Affairs in China where, as Treasury's first permanent representative in China, he was responsible for engaging with China on a broad array of economic issues, including financial regulation, monetary policy, and exchange rate policy. Loevinger played a lead role in establishing the S&ED and has worked with PRC regulators to open new markets for US financial services firms, including recent breakthroughs to rescind a moratorium on new licenses for foreign securities firms and allow foreign banks to trade corporate bonds.
Prior to his appointment, Loevinger was Treasury deputy assistant secretary for Africa, the Middle East, and Asia and represented Treasury in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and other multilateral fora. Since joining Treasury as a staff economist in 1991, Loevinger has served as special assistant to the under secretary, assistant attache in Paris, economist on the Mexico Crisis Task Force, and director of the Office of East Asian Nations. He was also an economist at the International Monetary Fund. Loevinger received a BA from Dartmouth College in 1984 and a Master's in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 1988.
Derek Chollet
US Department of State
Derek Chollet is the principal deputy director of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff. Prior to joining the State Department, he was a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a non-resident fellow in the Brookings Institution's Global Economy and Development Program, and an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University. During the Bill Clinton administration, he served in the State Department in several capacities, including as chief speechwriter for US Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke and special adviser to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. Chollet also assisted former secretaries of State James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher with the research and writing of their memoirs, Holbrooke with his book on the Dayton peace process in Bosnia, and Talbott with his book on US-Russian relations during the 1990s. Chollet was foreign policy adviser to Senator John Edwards (D-NC), both on his legislative staff and during the 2004 Kerry/Edwards presidential campaign.
Chollet has been a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, and a visiting scholar and adjunct professor at the George Washington University. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of five books on American foreign policy, including The Road to the Dayton Accords: A Study of American Statecraft (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11, coauthored with James Goldgeier (PublicAffairs, 2008). Chollet's commentaries and reviews on US foreign policy and politics have appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, Washington Monthly, and many other books and publications. Educated at Cornell and Columbia, Chollet was raised in Lincoln, Nebraska.