For the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world has entered an era dominated by two superpowers — but, unlike rivals in the Cold War, the U.S. and China are also entwined on an unprecedented scale. Are they on a collision course over Taiwan and other issues, or can they find common ground and set “guardrails” to keep the peace? What does each side misperceive about the other’s intentions and capabilities?

Panelists:
Evan Osnos is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a CNN contributor, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Based in Washington D.C., he writes about politics and foreign affairs. He was the China Correspondent at The New Yorker from 2008 to 2013. His first book, “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China,” won the 2014 National Book award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2020, he published the international bestseller, “Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now,” based on interviews with Biden, Barack Obama, and others. His latest book, “Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury,” was published in September 2021.

Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York, and a former professor and dean at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. He worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and has traveled widely in China since the mid-70s. Schell is the author of 15 books, 10 of them about China, and a contributor to numerous edited volumes. He has written widely for many magazines and newspapers, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times. Schell is a Fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications at USC, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also the recipient of many prizes and fellowships including a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Zha Jianying is a writer, journalist, and cultural commentator in both English and Chinese. She is the author of two books in English, Tide Players: The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China (named “One of the best books of 2011” by The Economist), and China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture, and six books of non-fiction and fiction in Chinese, the most recent being Freedom Is Not Free (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2020). Her work has appeared widely in publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Dushu, and Wanxiang. Tide Players was selected by The Economist as “One of the Best Books of 2011.” China Pop was selected by The Village Voice as “One of the 25 Best Books of 1995.” Her Chinese book in 2006, Bashiniandai (The Eighties), was selected as the “Best Book of the Year” by numerous mainland Chinese publications A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she also has been a regular commentator on current events on Chinese television, and works as the China Representative of the India China Institute at The New School in New York. Born and raised in Beijing, educated in China and the U.S., she lives in Beijing and New York.

Photo by Zachary Keimig on Unsplash