Thursday, October 16 | 8:00 PM – 9:15 PM | Virtual via Zoom
From the ping-pong diplomacy that preceded formal diplomatic ties in the 1970s to the robust educational exchanges that flourished in the reform era in the 1990s, people-to-people connections have provided continuity during periods of political tension in the U.S.-China relationship. Yet in today’s environment of strategic competition, people-to-people engagements, such as academic partnerships, student exchanges, business networks, and diaspora community ties, are increasingly restricted in the name of national security. Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, whose families and networks often span both countries, increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs. This webinar will focus on the past, present, and future of people-to-people ties between the United States and China, as well as the implications for AAPI communities and U.S. policy. At a time of strained U.S.-China ties and a concurrent rise in incidents of profiling and violence directed toward the AAPI community in the United States, this discussion will explore how U.S. foreign policy intersects with domestic policy and rights.
Join the US-China Education Trust, APA Justice, and Committee of 100 on Thursday, October 16, 2025, at 8:00 p.m. ET for an expansive discussion of these topics with two distinguished Asian American ambassadors — Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch and Governor Gary Locke – whose personal journeys and family histories bridge both nations. They will be joined in dialogue by Jessica Chen Weiss, David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins SAIS.
Speaker Biography
Panelists
Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch is the first Asian American to serve as a U.S. Ambassador and the first Asian American Peace Corps Volunteer. She began her distinguished career in 1964 as a Volunteer in Malaysia and rose to become U.S. Ambassador to Nepal in 1989. Her public service included presidential appointments at the U.S. Agency for International Development, leadership roles in the U.S. Senate and U.S. Information Agency, and fellowships at Harvard University. She is recognized among 147 notable women in U.S. history in A to Z of American Women Leaders and Activists.
After 25 years in government, Ambassador Bloch entered the private sector in 1993 as Group Executive Vice President at Bank of America, where she led Public Relations, Government Affairs, and Public Policy. She later served as President and CEO of the United States-Japan Foundation and, beginning in 1998, shifted her focus to China as a visiting professor and academic leader at institutions including Peking University, Fudan University, and the University of Maryland. She is the Founding President and Executive Chair of the U.S.-China Education Trust (USCET) and co-founder of both the Organization of Chinese American Women and the Women’s Foreign Policy Group.
Gary Locke is Board Chair of the Committee of 100. When he was the Governor of Washington, he oversaw the creation of 280,000 new private sector jobs. His cabinet was the most diverse in state history, and over half his judicial appointees were women. His management skills and innovations won him acclaim from nationally recognized organizations, including Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. During his tenure, Washington was ranked one of America’s four best-managed states.
As Commerce Secretary, he led President Obama’s National Export Initiative to double American exports; assumed a troubled 2010 Census, which, under his supervision, ended on time and $2 billion under budget; and achieved the most significant reduction in patent application processing in the agency’s history. As U.S. Ambassador to China, he opened markets for made-in-USA goods and services; reduced wait times for visa interviews of Chinese applicants from 100 days to 3; and, through the Embassy’s air quality monitoring program, exposed the severity of China’s air pollution. Locke obtained his JD from Boston University School of Law.
Jessica Chen Weiss is the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and the inaugural faculty director of the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs (ACF) at SAIS. From August 2021 to July 2022, she served as senior advisor to the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department on a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars (IAF-TIRS). Weiss is the author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (Oxford University Press, 2014). H
Her research appears in numerous reputable academic journals. With commentary in newspapers and the Ezra Klein show, Weiss was profiled by the New Yorker and named one of Prospect Magazine’s Top Thinkers for 2024. Weiss is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis and previously the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Cornell University and an assistant professor at Yale University. She founded the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford University. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, she received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego.