NCUSCR U.S.-China Insights

A successful pandemic response helped reshape Taiwan’s image in 2020. Could a new U.S. administration further change the island’s prospects in 2021?

Margaret Lewis explores the new year's possibilities for U.S.-Taiwan relations, as well as the key issues facing the Taiwan government’s domestic and global standing.

The influence of artificial intelligence on our world is only growing, as smart home products, algorithm-based streaming platforms, and even autonomous vehicles become a part of our daily lives. Since the 1990s, American tech companies in Silicon Valley have dominated the development and application of AI-driven technologies. However, AI pioneer Dr. Kai-Fu Lee explains that China has rapidly caught up with the United States, accelerating AI innovation and implementation in our daily lives. Lee argues that the future of AI will be even larger than the industrial revolution, posing unprecedented challenges and responsibilities for both AI superpowers. Are the United States and China going to cooperate or compete?

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is the chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures and president of Sinovation Venture’s Artificial Intelligence Institute. Sinovation Ventures, is a leading technology investment firm focusing on developing the next generation of Chinese high-tech companies. Prior to founding Sinovation in 2009, Dr. Lee was the president of Google China. Previously, he held executive positions at Microsoft, SGI, and Apple. Dr. Lee received his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University, Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University both in computer science, as well as honorary doctorate degrees from both Carnegie Mellon and the City University of Hong Kong. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

In the field of artificial intelligence, Dr. Lee founded Microsoft Research China, which was named as the hottest research lab by MIT Technology Review in 2004. Later renamed Microsoft Research Asia, this institute trained the great majority of AI leaders in China, including CTOs or AI heads at Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Lenovo, Huawei, and Haier. While with Apple, Dr. Lee led AI projects in speech and natural language, which have been featured on Good Morning America and in the Wall Street Journal. He has received 10 U.S. patents, published more than 100 journal and conference papers, and written seven top selling books in Chinese. He has over 50 million followers on social media.

President Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected in January, 2020, on a platform similar to that of her first term, yet new cross-Strait developments and changing challenges at home suggest the next four years may not be a continuation of the status quo. Seton Hall University law professor and Taiwan expert Margaret Lewis explores the possibilities for mainland-Taiwan relations as well as the local issues that will define both Tsai's second term and the near future of Taiwan.

In the decades following World War II, global geopolitics were dominated by two superpowers: the United States and the U.S.S.R. The Cold War era was defined by estrangement and the threat posed by a nuclear arms race between the two countries. Today, there is growing consensus that the United States is entering into a new kind of cold war with another communist superpower: China. As the U.S.-China trade war heats up—potentially morphing into a larger technology war—and competition becomes the primary dynamic, what parallels can be made? Dr. Oriana Skylar Mastro of Georgetown University and the American Enterprise Institute explains why U.S. relations with China differ from those with the former Soviet Union, and why a new cold war might not be the worst outcome.

Oriana Skylar Mastro is an assistant professor of security studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where her research addresses critical questions regarding Chinese military and security policy, military operations, and rising power challenges to the international order. Dr. Mastro is also a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and concurrently serves in the United States Air Force Reserve as a senior China analyst at the Pentagon. She is the author of numerous publications, including The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime (Cornell University Press, 2019). Dr. Mastro is a fellow of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program.