Professor Harry Harding
Dean of the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia
Professor Harry Harding was a guest of the US Studies Centre in November 2008. He was guest of honour at a US Business Leadership Forum luncheon, co-sponsored by Allens Arthur Robinson.
Harry Harding is University Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University. In 2005-07, he was Director of Research and Analysis at Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm headquartered in New York. He remains a Counselor to Eurasia Group and Chair of its China Task Force, and also serves as a Visiting Fellow in the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society.
A specialist on Asian affairs with a particular interest in China, Dr. Harding is the author of A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972 (1992), China and Northeast Asia: The Political Dimension (1988), China's Second Revolution: Reform after Mao (1987), and Organizing China: The Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949-1976 (1981). His edited volumes include The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know (2004); Sino-American Relations, 1945-55: A Joint Reassessment of a Critical Decade (1989); and China's Foreign Relations in the 1980s (1984). He has published articles in a wide range of academic and policy journals, from China Quarterly to Foreign Policy to World Politics, and serves on the editorial boards of the China Quarterly and the Journal of Democracy.
At Eurasia Group, Dr Harding was responsible for organising and leading a group of approximately 45 research directors, analysts, associates, and publications staff, divided into practices that covered Asia, Europe and Eurasia, the Middle East and Africa, Latin America, and Transnational Issues (including energy and biosecurity). A major part of his assignment was the development of the firm's intellectual capital on the methodology of political forecasting and political risk assessment. Dr Harding was also directly responsible for several more specific projects: he oversaw the creation of a Global Macro practice; designed and edited the firm's weekly publication, Politica; and conceived and coordinated Eurasia Group's China Task Force, which assessed the long-term political, economic, ecological, and international risks associated with developments in China over the ten year period 2005-2015.
At the Asia Society, Dr Harding has advised on the establishment of a new Center for US-China Relations. He has offered recommendations on the agenda and format of the Center's programs, and is conducting research on Chinese and American public opinion on the US-China relationship, the present debate over the likely evolution of China over the next decade, and the expanding agenda of issues in the Sino-American relationship.
