Wednesday, August 20 I 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
* Luncheon Event *
China believes that this is its moment to unseat the US as a global leader, even more so now as American alliances in Asia and the EU are shaken by US tariffs and sudden policy shifts. China is vying with the US for global leadership in trade, technology, and global soft power, is cozying up to Russia and Iran, and has made impressive inroads into the countries of the global South, including in Africa and Latin America. Industries like electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries are dominating global markets and breakthroughs like China’s DeepSeek AI, has been described by some as a “Sputnik moment” for the US. As president Xi Jinping likes to say: “the East is Rising and the West declining” and “time and momentum are on our side.”
At the same time, China faces pushback from countries flooded by its cheap products while its internal economy faces enormous challenges including surging debt, inequality between city and countryside, the demographic time bomb of an aging population, and an increasing politicization of business and economics under Xi that has spooked Chinese entrepreneurs. The Chinese leadership’s obsession with building an economy driven by advanced technology also appears to be leaving many Chinese behind, as youth unemployment surges and nervous households stop spending, slamming the brakes on China’s consumption engine. Whether China succeeds or fails, the implications for the world will be huge.
Venue:
Holland & Knight
511 Union St. #2700 Nashville, TN 37219
Speaker: Dexter Tiff Roberts
Dexter Tiff Roberts is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council Global China Hub;
publisher of Trade War, a weekly on US-China relations and the Chinese economy; instructor in
Chinese politics at the University of Montana; author of The Myth of Chinese Capitalism (St. Martin’s Press, 2020). He is the founder and publisher of Trade War, a weekly newsletter on Chinese business and politics, with over 5,000 subscribers from government, finance, and academia, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub, and an instructor in Chinese politics and history at the University of Montana. He is a sought-after commentator on the Chinese economy and U.S.-China relations, with his analysis featured in Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, NPR, the BBC, and CNN.
Roberts served for more than two decades as China bureau chief and Asia News Editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, based in Beijing, where he covered China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, the impact of the Global Financial Crisis, and the rise of authoritarian leader Xi Jinping. He has reported from all of China’s provinces and regions, including Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as from Mongolia, Cambodia, and North Korea. Previously, he was director of China affairs at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center.
Roberts has won numerous journalism honors for his writing, including Overseas Press Club and Society of Publishers in Asia editorial excellence awards. He is regularly asked to share his views on China. He has spoken at the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Asia Society, the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, the Contemporary Centre for China Affairs at India’s Ministry of External Affairs, as well as at numerous universities in the U.S., China and Hong Kong. He has lectured on Chinese disinformation at the Foreign Service Institute at the U.S. Department of State, and provided testimony on the Chinese economy to the congressionally mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and the UK Cabinet Office.
Roberts holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Stanford University and a Master of International Affairs, with a focus on China, from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. He studied at National Taiwan Normal University’s Mandarin Training Center in Taipei and speaks fluent Chinese. Roberts’ first book, The Myth of Chinese Capitalism: the Worker, the Factory and the Future of the World (St. Martin’s Press), was chosen as one of The Economist’s “best books of the year” for 2020, and was a best seller in Chinese, published by Taiwan’s Gusa Publishing.
