The Rumi Forum presented "China's Encumbered Rise in Asia and the United States" with Dr. Robert G. Sutter

Synopsis: "Predictions of a power shift in Asia with rising China overtaking a declining United States are very common, but do not mesh well with the realities in the region. Fresh from his most recent survey of regional opinion on this subject in 15 Asian Pacific cities, Professor Sutter shows the slow and mixed progress China has made toward Asian leadership in a strategic and economic environment that remains heavily reliant on the sustained leadership of the United States."

Dr. Robert G. Sutter, Robert Sutter has been Visiting Professor of Asian Studies at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, since 2001. In addition to this full-time position, Sutter teaches regularly as Adjunct Professor of Asian Studies in the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.

A Ph.D. graduate in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University, Sutter taught part-time for over thirty years at Georgetown, George Washington, Johns Hopkins Universities, or the University of Virginia. He has published 18 books, over 100 articles and several hundred government reports dealing with contemporary East Asian and Pacific countries and their relations with the United States. His most recent book is U.S.-Chinese Relations: Perilous Past, Pragmatic Present (Rowman and Littlefield 2010).

Sutter’s government career (1968-2001) involved work on Asian and Pacific affairs and US foreign policy for the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was for many years the Senior Specialist and Director of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service.

He also was the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and the Pacific at the US Government’s National Intelligence Council, and the China Division Director at the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.