Date

Location
Pinery at the Hill

Categories

• Luncheon

In January of 2017, in one of the first acts of the new administration, the U.S. made the decision to pull the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), signaling an end to US participation in multilateral trade agreements.

Since then, Beijing has continued to exert greater influence in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. Through initiatives like One Belt One Road (OBOR), China is increasingly capitalizing on American isolation as a means to advance its political interests.

Using Cambodia as a case study, join us as Dr. Sophal Ear examines how China has been able to simultaneously advance its political agenda in the Asia-Pacific region by politically needling an America on the wane. Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs bureaucrats allegedly see the world very much as zero-sum; America’s loss is China’s gain, and countries like Cambodia serve as proxies for China. China has already used its growing economic influence to encroach on existing hegemonic relationships, exerting increasing control over the South China Sea and Mekong River and through special economic zones and massive investment focused locally. Cambodia’s example shows that China has stepped beyond a purely economic partnership and has become a beacon for autocracy, resulting in democratic retreat.

REGISTRATION DEADLINE APRIL 14, 2018

When Wednesday, April 18 Registration and Luncheon: 11:30-12:15 Program and Q&A: 1:00-1:30

Where Pinery at the Hill 775 W. Bijou Street, Colorado Springs Free Parking

Sophal Ear, PhD is Tenured Associate Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College.  He previously taught political economy and how to rebuild countries after wars at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and international development policy at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. He consulted for the World Bank, was Assistant Resident Representative for the United Nations Development Programme in East Timor, and Advisor to Cambodia’s first private equity fund Leopard Capital. A TED Fellow, Fulbright Specialist, Delphi Fellow of BigThink, Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, and Fellow of Salzburg Global Seminar,

he is on the boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Partners for Development, the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, the Southeast Asia Development Program, Diagnostic Microbiology Development Program, the Journal of International Relations and Development(Palgrave), theInternational Public Management Journal (Taylor & Francis), the Journal of South-East Asian American Education & Advancement (University of Texas), and Politics and the Life Sciences (Allen Press). He advises the Faculty of Development Studies at the Royal University of Phnom Penh and is a Councilor for the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. He is the author of Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2013) and co-author of The Hungry Dragon: How China’s Resources Quest is Reshaping the World (Routledge, 2013). He wrote and narrated the award-winning documentary film “The End/Beginning: Cambodia” based on his 2009 TED Talk and has appeared in several other documentaries. A graduate of Princeton and Berkeley, he moved to the United States from France as a Cambodian refugee at the age of 10.

 

 

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