China's Reform Program and Its Implications for U.S.-China Relations

Asia Society Texas Center presents China's Reform Program and Its Implications for U.S.-China Relations.

Last November's Third Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee strongly signaled the Chinese leadership's determination to embark upon a new wave of comprehensive reforms in China. The Plenum's key decisions, such as assigning the market a decisive role in allocating resources and the establishment of several new bodies to help ensure better coordination across the Chinese system, suggest China is keen to increase its integration with the outside world.

As leaders in both the United States and China have expressed their commitment to building "A New Type of Major Country Relations," it is crucial to understand how the future of China's reforms will bring important opportunities to the bilateral relationship.

Christopher K. Johnson (pictured) of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) joins Asia Society Texas Center, where he will discuss how China’s reform package will affect U.S.–China relations going forward.

Christopher K. Johnson is a senior adviser and holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS. An accomplished Asian affairs specialist, Mr. Johnson spent nearly two decades serving in the U.S. government’s intelligence and foreign affairs communities and has extensive experience analyzing and working in Asia on a diverse set of country-specific and transnational issues.

Throughout his career, he has chronicled China’s dynamic political and economic transformation, the development of its robust military modernization program, and its resurgence as a regional and global power. He has frequently advised senior White House, cabinet, congressional, military, and foreign officials on the Chinese leadership and on Beijing’s foreign and security policies.

Mr. Johnson worked as a senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he played a key role in the analytic support to policymakers during the 1996 Taiwan Strait missile crisis, the 1999 accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the downing of a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft on Hainan Island in 2001, and the SARS epidemic in 2003. He also helped shape senior officials’ understanding of the politics of the Jiang Zemin era, the successful leadership transition to Hu Jintao in 2002, and the preparations for the fall 2012 leadership succession.

Mr. Johnson served as an intelligence liaison to two secretaries of state and their deputies on worldwide security issues and in 2011 was awarded the U.S. Department of State’s Superior Honor Award for outstanding support to the secretary and her senior staff. He also served abroad in a field site in Southeast Asia.