Speaker Biographies
Keynote Speakers
His Excellency Wang Guangya
Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations (Confirmed)
Wang Guangya has been Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and the Permanent Representative of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations since 2003. Ambassador Wang was born in the Jiangsu Province in March 1950. After studying in Wales and at the London School of Economics, he divided his career between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing and the Chinese Mission to the UN in New York, with additional study at John Hopkins University in 1981 and 1982. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Wang began his service at the Translation and Interpretation Department in 1975 and rose to the rank of Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs (1998–99), then Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs (1999–2003). In a speech in April 2004, the Ambassador expressed his vision for China’s future foreign policy. “With the fast development of globalization and transnational challenges and threats, no country can develop itself in seclusion, even it is in possession of unparalleled military and economic might. The international community can only choose cooperation to realize true peace and security.” Ambassador Wang is married and has one son.
The Honorable Christopher R. Hill
United States Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (Confirmed)
Christopher R. Hill was appointed to the position of United States Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs on April 8, 2005. Ambassador Hill is also leading the American delegation to the six-party talks directed toward resolving the nuclear crisis in North Korea. He received his B.A. in Economics from Bowdoin College in 1974 and his M.A. from the Naval War College in 1994. Before joining the Foreign Service, Ambassador Hill was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon. He has previously served as the Special Envoy to Kosovo (1998–1999), Ambassador to the Republic of Macedonia (1996–1999), and U.S. Ambassador to Poland (2000–2004). He has received a number of honors including the State Department’s Distinguished Service Award for his contributions as a member of the U.S. negotiating team for the Bosnia peace settlement and the Robert S. Frasure Award for Peace Negotiations for his work in the Kosovo crisis. Ambassador Hill testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in June that “dealing with China’s emergence—its economic and political development, its engagement in a rules-based international world, its evolution as a major military presence in the region—will be a key challenge and an important opportunity for the United States and its allies and friends over the next quarter of a century and beyond. ” Ambassador Hill speaks Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Albanian. He is married with three children.
The Honorable Peter W. Rodman
U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (Confirmed)
Peter W. Rodman was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs by President Bush in 2001. Mr. Rodman now acts as principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense on matters of international security strategy and policy, primarily in the areas of East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Persian Gulf, Africa, and Latin America. Mr. Rodman was born on November 24, 1943, in Boston, Massachusetts and was educated at Harvard College (A.B. summa cum laude), Oxford University (B.A., M.A.), and Harvard Law School (J.D.). He has served the U.S. government in national defense under four separate administrations, most recently serving as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and counselor to the National Security Council (1987–1990), Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (1986–1987), and Director of the State Department Policy Planning Staff (1984–1986). Under the Nixon and Ford administrations, he was a member of the National Security Council staff and Special Assistant to Dr. Henry Kissinger while Dr. Kissinger served as both National Security Adviser and Secretary of State (1969–1977). Mr. Rodman currently lives in Washington D.C. with his wife Veronique. They have two children.
Professor Merle Goldman
Professor Emerita of History at Boston University and Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University (Confirmed)
Merle Goldman is currently a Professor Emerita of History at Boston University, where she teaches Chinese History, and a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University. Dr. Goldman was born on March 12, 1931. She obtained her B.A. at Sarah Lawrence College in 1953, her M.A. at Radcliffe in 1957, and her Ph.D. at Harvard University in History and Far Eastern Languages in 1964. Previously, she has taught courses in Far Eastern History at Wellesley College (1963–64), lectured at Radcliffe Seminars at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (1968–70), and taught as a professor in the Department of History at Boston University (1972–2001). She has written and edited dozens of books and articles, including China’s Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent (1981) and Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China: Political Reform in the Deng Xiaoping Decade (1994), both of which were named notable books by the New York Times. She has been the recipient of numerous professional honors, including membership of the Editorial Board for The China Quarterly (1991) and the U.S. Delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights (1993). Dr. Goldman believes that the expansion of the Chinese economy will result in greater reforms in the political, social, and cultural spheres. She points out in an article in 2000 that “China’s expanding market economy, accelerating political decentralization, social and cultural pluralism, sprouting democratization, and international openness appear closer to its pre-1949 history than to the political centralization, state-run economy, social and cultural homogenization, and international isolation of the Mao period.” Professor Goldman and her husband Marshall have four children and reside in Boston.