A country’s military capability, is one of its most important instruments of statecraft. China’s People’s Liberation Army has been rapidly modernising in pursuit of becoming a ‘world-class’ force. Join us as Professor M. Taylor Fravel examines China’s past and present approaches to military strategy, focusing on how it plans and prepares to use armed force, particularly through the concept of ‘active defence’. The implications for China’s broader security policy, global ambitions, and United States-China-Southeast Asia relations will be explored.
The Yale-NUS Lecture on Global Affairs is sponsored by the late Professor Saw Swee Hock.
About the speaker
Professor M. Taylor Fravel
Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science, and Director, MIT Security Studies Programme, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Taylor Fravel is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China, and East Asia. His books include Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes, (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy Since 1949(Princeton University Press, 2019). His other publications have appeared in International Security, Foreign Affairs, Security Studies, International Studies Review, The China Quarterly, The Washington Quarterly, Journal of Strategic Studies, Armed Forces & Society, Current History, Asian Survey, Asian Security, China Leadership Monitor, andContemporary Southeast Asia. Prof Fravel is a graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford University, where he received his PhD. He also has graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 2016, he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation. He is a member of the board of directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and serves as the Principal Investigator for the Maritime Awareness Project.
About the moderator
Associate Professor Chin-Hao Huang
Associate Professor of Social Sciences (Political Science), and Head of Studies, Global Affairs, Yale-NUS College
Chin-Hao Huang is Associate Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore, with appointments in both the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Yale-NUS College. He serves as co-chair of the International Affairs programme at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and is also the Head of Studies for Global Affairs at Yale-NUS. He is the author of three books, including, most recently, Power and Restraint in China’s Rise (Columbia, 2022), which received Honorable Mention for the T.V. Paul Best Book in Global International Relations. His research has been published in leading disciplinary journals such as International Organization, Perspectives on Politics, Foreign Policy Analysis, and The China Quarterly among others and he has testified on China’s foreign and security policy before the U.S. Congress. He has also served as a consultant for U.S. and European foundations, governments, and companies on their strategies and policies in Asia. His work has been featured in such media outlets as BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC Asia, Financial Times, and TIME. He received his B.S. with honours from Georgetown University and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Southern California.
Watch the lecture recording here:
