Speaker biographies

Dan Blumenthal joined AEI in November 2004 as a resident fellow in Asian studies. Previously, he was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for international security affairs during the first George W. Bush administration. In that capacity, he led a team that formulated and implemented defense policies and programs toward, and for, these portfolio countries. Before his service at the Department of Defense, Mr. Blumenthal practiced law in New York and was a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Mr. Blumenthal was appointed by Senator Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) as a commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in February 2006.

Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at AEI and senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) in Seattle. He serves on the advisory board of the Korea Economic Institute of America and is a founding member of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Mr. Eberstadt regularly consults for governmental and international organizations, including the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. State Department, USAID, and World Bank. He has published over 300 studies and articles in scholarly and popular journals, mainly on topics in demography, international development, and East Asian security. His dozen-plus books and monographs include The Poverty of Communism, The Population of North Korea, The Tyranny of Numbers, The End of North Korea, Korea’s Future and the Great Power, and the forthcoming North Korea’s Economy Between Crisis and Catastrophe.

Nicholas R. Lardy is a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC. Mr. Lardy came to the Institute in March 2003 from the Brookings Institution, where he was a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program from 1995 until 2003 and served as interim director of Foreign Policy Studies in 2001. Prior to his work at Brookings, he served at the University of Washington and Yale University. He has written numerous articles and books on the Chinese economy. Mr. Lardy’s books include Prospects for a US-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement; Integrating China into the Global Economy; and China’s Unfinished Economic Revolution. Mr. Lardy serves on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the National Committee on United States–China Relations; is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; and is a member of the editorial boards of The China Quarterly, Journal of Asian Business, China Review, and China Economic Review. He received his BA from the University of Wisconsin in 1968 and his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1975, both in economics.

Randall Schriver is a founding partner of Armitage International LLC and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He previously served as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2003–2005, and as chief of staff and senior policy advisor to deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage from 2001–2003. Prior to his work at the State Department, he was an independent consultant and a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as a presidential management fellow from 1994–1998. Mr. Schriver has also served as an active-duty naval intelligence officer and was in the Navy reserves. He served on the Bush-Cheney Defense Transition Team and was a member of the Asia Policy Team for the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. He has won numerous military and civilian awards from the U.S. government and was recently presented with the Order of the Propitious Clouds by the president of Taiwan for service promoting U.S.-Taiwan relations.

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