Current U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns will be the featured speaker for CHINA Town Hall 2023, a national conversation on how the U.S.-China relationship affects our communities. From trade, tech competition, and fentanyl to climate cooperation, national security, and anti-Asian racism, the future of both countries will be determined by their relations with one another and the global community.
Join us for the local viewing and commentary on the nationwide virtual conversation on Tuesday, October 24 from 4:00 - 5:00 pm MST, followed by a local discussion from 5:00 - 6:00 pm MST.
As America’s top diplomat in China and one of the U.S.’ most articulate foreign policy experts, Ambassador Burns is uniquely suited to unpack the challenges and opportunities for both countries as they confront the most critical issues of the 21st century.
Networking reception to follow CHINA Town Hall at Thunderbird Pub from 6:15 pm - 7:30 pm. Light appetizers and non-alcoholic beverages provided.
*Local featured speakers to be announced soon! Stay tuned!
Nicholas Burns, U.S. Ambassador to China
Nicholas Burns is U.S. Ambassador to China. Nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate, he was sworn into office on December 22, 2023.
As Ambassador, he leads a team of experienced, dedicated, and diverse public servants from 47 U.S. government agencies and sub-agencies at the U.S. Mission in China, including at the Embassy in Beijing and at the American Consulates in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Shenyang. He oversees the Mission’s interaction with the PRC on the full range of political, security, economic, commercial, consular, and many other issues that shape this critical relationship.
Ambassador Burns has had a distinguished career in American diplomacy, serving six U.S. Presidents and nine Secretaries of State over 27 years. His State Department roles have included Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the State Department’s third-ranking official and most senior career diplomat (2005-2008); U.S. Ambassador to NATO (2001-2005); U.S. Ambassador to Greece (1997-2001); and State Department spokesman (1995-1997). Before that, he worked at the National Security Council at the White House (1990-1995) where he served as Special Assistant to President Clinton and Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs and as Director for Soviet Affairs for President George H.W. Bush during the collapse of the USSR.
Ambassador Burns’ engagement with China also spans decades.
He first visited the PRC in 1988, accompanying Secretary of State George Shultz, and then again in 1989 with President George H.W. Bush. He made subsequent visits with Secretaries Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, including during the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the PRC in 1997. As Under Secretary of State, he worked with the PRC government on a diverse range of issues, including Afghanistan, North Korea, United Nations sanctions against Iran and U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific. As a private citizen, he also created and managed an Aspen Strategy Group policy dialogue with the PRC government’s Central Party School.
Ambassador Burns has served on the boards of numerous nonprofit organizations, and has received fifteen honorary degrees, the Presidential Distinguished Service Award, and the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award.
A graduate of Boston College and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Ambassador Burns is currently on a public service leave from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government where he was the Goodman Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations and founded the school’s Future of Diplomacy Project.
Presenting Panelists
Dr. Brian J. Dille
Brian Dille grew up in Southeastern Idaho where he tired of the constant snow and wind. After attending college at Brigham Young University in Utah, he attended graduate school at Arizona State University. There he received a Ph.D. in Political Science, emphasizing the political psychology of foreign policy decision-making.
He has taught political science at Mesa Community College since 1999. In addition to teaching courses in world politics and American government, he directs the Model United Nations program and hosts a high school MUN conference every February.
He published a textbook for Model UN designed to be used by high school and community college students. He also published Arizona Voices, a textbook on the state’s history and government.
While brought to Arizona by his wife, Brian has developed a love for the state’s beauties and people. He is happy that his four children are 5th-generation Arizona natives. He enjoys hiking, archery, running & biking.
Dr. Stephen MacKinnon
Trained in Chinese Studies at Yale and the University of California, MacKinnon is an emeritus professor of History and former Director of the Center for Asian Studies at Arizona State University. He taught courses on the history of the People's Republic of China for thirty years. His first trip to mainland China was in 1972, meeting with Premier Zhou Enlai and others. Along with numerous articles and book chapters, he is the author of Power and Politics in Late Imperial China (1981); China Reporting: An Oral History of American Journalism in the 1930s and 1940s (1987); Agnes Smedley: Life and Times of an American Radical (1988); Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and Making of Modern China (2008). MacKinnon has lived and taught extensively throughout China and in institutions across the United States on U.S.-China relations.
Dr. Jeffrey Timmermans
Dr. Jeffrey Timmermans is the Donald W. Reynolds Chair in Business Journalism and director of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. He has more than two decades of experience as a financial journalist and journalism educator, having worked as a reporter in Tokyo for The Wall Street Journal and as a managing editor for Dow Jones Newswires in Hong Kong and Singapore. He also worked for Bain & Company, leading the global strategy consulting firm's public-relations efforts in Asia. Timmermans joined ASU Cronkite in 2021 from The University of Hong Kong (HKU), where he served for more than 10 years as the director of HKU’s undergraduate journalism program and was an elected member of HKU Senate. In that time, Timmermans developed a comprehensive postgraduate business-journalism curriculum widely considered the best in Asia and taught news reporting and economics to undergraduates. He also founded a successful media consulting firm with multinational clients including JPMorganChase, Credit Suisse, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx), CBRE, and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. A former governor of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong, Timmermans served from 2014 to 2021 as Head of Judges for the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Awards, the region’s preeminent awards for journalism. He has a B.A. from Colgate University, a M.S. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a Ph.D. from The University of Hong Kong. He is married with one exceptionally precocious daughter and is proud to be a Sun Devil with Lion Rock spirit.