ORF America hosted a group of young professionals for an after hours discussion with Ryan Hass and Vikram Singh. Ryan Hass is the director of the John L. Thornton China Center and the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies at Brookings. He is also a nonresident affiliated fellow in the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. Vikram Singh is senior advisor to the Asia Program at USIP and is also senior advisor for defense and aerospace, at the U.S. India Strategic Partnership Forum.

This third edition of the series, on Great Powers at the G20, explored how multilateral summits like the G20 offer spaces for both cooperation and competition. This year, Putin and Xi seem to be absent from many of these important conversations, and at the same time are pursuing the expansion of alternative platforms like BRICS. The discussion took advantage of the speakers’ extensive expertise in and out of government to offer some insight on what to expect in the coming months from multilateral summits.

The discussion reviewed several themes including recent high level U.S. government engagement with China, forging a consensus at the G20 summit in New Delhi, perception and misperceptions on Taiwan, as well as posturing in the Indo-Pacific. The speakers entertained questions on the relationship between economic integration and mitigating conflict, as well as the politics of leadership within the Chinese Communist Party.

This was the third convening of the series hosted by ORF America for young professionals in Washington, DC. The series offers participants the opportunity to informally engage with distinguished foreign policy experts, as well as a platform to network with peers. Participants include Washington, DC’s best and brightest from the U.S. Government, Congressional Staff, think tanks, graduate programs, and the private sector.