China in the Heartland: Building a Balanced Approach

As China’s influence grows around the world, skepticism in the United States grows in tandem with it. Evidence of this is seen throughout the Heartland of America, where anti-China legislation and rhetoric have grown over the years. Professor Jack Zhang of the KU Department of Political Science will be joined by Susan Thornton, Vice Chair of the U.S. Heartland China Association and a retired senior U.S. diplomat with decades of experience in Eurasia and East Asia, and Kyle Jaros, an associate professor at the University of Notre Dame, for a discussion on building a balanced approach for relations with China.

This program is presented in partnership with the United States Heartland China Association and the KU Department of Political Science.

With support from the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program, which is generously funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Jack Zhang is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Kansas (KU) and director of the KU Trade War Lab. He is a Public Intellectuals Program fellow with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University in 2018-2019 and a Wilson China Fellow at the Wilson Center in 2021-2022. Dr. Zhang’s research explores the political economy of trade and conflict in East Asia. His newest projects investigate the determinants of U.S. foreign policy towards China, the politics of the U.S.-China Trade War, and the national security implications of economic interdependence with China.

Susan Thornton serves as Vice Chair of the U.S. Heartland China Association and is a retired senior U.S. diplomat with almost 30 years of experience with the U.S. State Department in Eurasia and East Asia. She is currently a senior fellow and research scholar at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale University Law School; director of the Forum on Asia-Pacific Security at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy; and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Until July 2018, Thornton was acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State and led East Asia policymaking amid crises with North Korea, escalating trade tensions with China, and a fast-changing international environment. In previous State Department roles, she worked on U.S. policy toward China, Korea, and the former Soviet Union and served in leadership positions at U.S. embassies in Central Asia, Russia, the Caucasus, and China.

Thornton received her master’s in international relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and her bachelor’s from Bowdoin College in economics and Russian. She serves on several non-profit boards and speaks Mandarin and Russian.

Kyle Jaros is an associate professor of global affairs at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. He is a faculty fellow of the Keough School’s Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies and the Pulte Institute for Global Development.

Jaros’s research explores the politics of urban and regional development, intergovernmental relations, and subnational foreign engagement with a focus on China. His first book, China’s Urban Champions: The Politics of Spatial Development, examines the policy logics and political factors driving uneven development in China’s provinces.

Before coming to Notre Dame, he was an associate professor in the political economy of China at the University of Oxford’s School of Global and Area Studies and held a China Public Policy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Ash Center of the Harvard Kennedy School. Jaros earned a PhD and MA in political science from the Department of Government at Harvard University, and an AB in public and international affairs, and a certificate in Chinese language and culture from Princeton University. He also holds a graduate certificate in Chinese studies from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies.