China and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

China represents Russia’s most powerful ally today. Yet, Russia’s invasion and subsequent international isolation have severely tested this friendship. Three experts on China and its influence in the post Soviet region will discuss the future of the Chinese-Russian alliance, its impact on the war, as well as the affect of the war on Chinese foreign policy.

Panelists’ Bios:

Jude Blanchette
Jude Blanchette holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Previously, he was engagement director at The Conference Board’s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing, where he researched China’s political environment with a focus on the workings of the Communist Party of China and its impact on foreign companies and investors. Prior to working at The Conference Board, Blanchette was the assistant director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. Blanchette is a public intellectual fellow at the National Committee on United States-China Relations and serves on the board of the American Mandarin Society. He is also a senior advisor at Martin+Crumpton Group, a geopolitical risk advisory based in Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.A. in modern Chinese studies from the University of Oxford and a B.A. in economics from Loyola University in Maryland.

Patricia Kim
Patricia M. Kim is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow at Brookings and holds a joint appointment to the John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies. She is an expert on Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and U.S. alliance management and regional security dynamics in East Asia. Previously, Kim served as a China specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where she focused on China’s impact on conflict dynamics around the world and directed major projects on U.S.-China strategic stability and China’s growing presence in the Red Sea region. Kim received her doctoral degree from the Department of Politics at Princeton University and her bachelor’s degree with highest distinction in political science and Asian studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and Korean, and proficient in Japanese. Kim is also a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Yurii Poita
Yurii Poita is Head of the Asia-Pacific section at the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies (CACDS), and the Asian Section at the New Geopolitics Research Network (NGRN), Ukraine. He is a scientist and researcher of China-Ukraine relations, including defence cooperation; China’s influence in the post-Soviet space; and “hybrid” methods of influence. Poita was educated at the Zhytomyr Military Institute (Ukraine) with a degree in military sciences, at the Kyiv International University (with a Master degree in international relations), and is currently working on his PhD dissertation at the Kazakh National University al-Farabi. He has experience in the defense, in think tanks, as well as on individual research projects in a number of Ukrainian, Kazakh and European institutions and think tanks.

Sponsored by the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, the Asian Institute, East Asia Seminar Series at the Asian Institute, and the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine.