Sabina Knight is an author and translator best known for *Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction*. Her work on the politics of Chinese-English translation gained an audience following her defense of Chinese Nobel Laureate Mo Yan on NPR and in *The National Interest*. Born in London and educated in the United States, France, and Taiwan, Knight now lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she teaches at Smith College. She is also a research associate at Harvard University's Fairbank Center and a fellow in the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

Dr. Andrew S. Erickson is Professor of Strategy (tenured full professor) and the Research Director in the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI). A core founding member, he helped establish CMSI and stand it up officially in 2006, and has played an integral role in its development. CMSI inspired the creation of other research centers, which he has advised and supported; he is a China Aerospace Studies Institute Associate. Erickson is currently a Visiting Professor in full-time residence in Harvard University’s Department of Government. From 2019–22, he was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, where he has been an Associate in Research since 2008. He is also an Executive Committee member of Israel’s Haifa Maritime Center and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He serves on the editorial boards of Naval War College Review and Asia Policy.

In 2017 Erickson received NWC’s inaugural Civilian Faculty Research Excellence Award. In 2012 the National Bureau of Asian Research awarded him the inaugural Ellis Joffe Prize for PLA Studies; he now serves on the selection committee. His publications have won a variety of awards, including the NWC Foundation’s Hugh G. Nott Prize (first & second place), the U.S. Naval Institute General Prize Essay Contest (third prize), and repeated recognition by the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC).

Erickson has taught courses at NWC and Yonsei University. He provides tailored flag officer education for NWC, both on and off campus. He advises and evaluates a wide range of student research, theses, and professional development at NWC, Harvard, and other institutions. Erickson contributes curricular instruction, inputs, and guidance to NWC and other schools, particularly in support of the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF)’s guidance for professional military education regarding China. In 2013, while deployed in the Pacific as a Naval Postgraduate School Regional Security Education Program scholar aboard the flagship aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, Erickson delivered twenty-five hours of lectures. He has also accompanied a military air patrol. Erickson is coauthor of the Oxford Bibliography (Oxford University Press) on “The People’s Liberation Army (PLA).”

For fifteen-plus years, Erickson has supported NWC’s scholarly research relationship with Japanese counterparts. In 2014 he helped to escort the Commander of China’s Navy and his delegation on a visit to Harvard. He subsequently helped to establish, escort the first iteration of, and further assist NWC’s first bilateral naval officer exchange program and field studies class in China. Erickson was a scholar escort on a five-member congressional trip to China in 2011. He participates in a range of Track 1, 1.5, and 2 discussions, including as a delegate at the Shangri-La Dialogue.

From 2012–17 Erickson was an expert contributor to the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report (中国实时报), for which he authored or coauthored thirty-eight articles. During 2010–11 Erickson was the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program Fellow in residence at Harvard’s Center for Government and International Studies. From 2008–11 he was a Fellow in the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program. In 2005–06, he was a Research Fellow sponsored by the late longtime director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, Andrew Marshall.

Erickson has presented extensively at academic, private sector, and government institutions throughout the United States and Asia. He has broadened his knowledge by attending four Zhuhai Airshows and helping to edit newsletters for a major hedge fund. Erickson has briefed a broad array of senior U.S. and foreign policy-makers and principals. Within the U.S. Navy: the Chief of Naval Operations, his Executive Panel, the Secretary of the Navy, and leaders throughout the Indo-Pacific. Elsewhere in government: the SECDEF, the Ambassador to China, other Executive Branch officials, the Coast Guard Commandant, and multiple Members of Congress. Internationally: many high-level officials, including the heads of multiple foreign navies and other government organizations. Additionally: the National Academies’ Naval Studies Board.

Erickson testifies periodically before such congressional bodies as the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees and U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He has provided inputs for, and reviews of, multifarious government programs, simulation exercises, and reports; including in support of the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends study. Erickson’s research, presentations, and recommendations are consumed widely by key principals and have influenced specific aspects of U.S. and allied government military doctrine as well as civilian, military, and interagency assessments, policy, messaging guidance, statements, and actions.

Erickson received his Ph.D. and M.A. in politics from Princeton University (concentration: China/comparative politics and international relations) and graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College (majors: history and political science; certificate in international relations). He took many courses at The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA); studied Mandarin in the Princeton in Beijing program at Beijing Normal University’s College of Chinese Language and Culture; and studied Japanese language, politics, and economics in the year-long Associated Kyoto Program at Doshisha University.

Erickson previously worked for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) as a Chinese translator and technical analyst. He gained early experience interning extensively at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Consulate in Hong Kong, Peace Corps Headquarters, Senate, and White House. Erickson has traveled across the Indo-Pacific, from key islands, waters, and airspace to China’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound, multiple nations’ military bases near the Korean Demilitarized Zone, and remote hinterlands of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Proficient in Mandarin Chinese and conversant in Japanese, he has lived and performed academic work in China, Japan, and Korea.

Erickson’s research focuses on Indo-Asia-Pacific defense, international relations, technology, and resource issues. He has envisioned, developed, and led a pathbreaking seven-plus-year project to uncover China’s critically important but insufficiently understood Maritime Militia; his coauthored China Maritime Report No. 1—China’s Third Sea Force inaugurated a series of timely CMSI studies. Erickson has published chapters in a wide range of English- and Chinese-language edited volumes, including the two-part Fairbank Center “China Questions” series (Harvard University Press, 2018; and The China Questions 2: Critical Insights into U.S.-China Relations, 2022).

Erickson’s work has been published in such peer-reviewed journals as International Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, Technology in Society, Acta Astronautica, Asian Security, China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, The China Journal, and Journal of Chinese Political Science. It has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, The National Interest, Foreign Policy, Joint Force Quarterly, War on the Rocks, IHS Jane’s, Geopolitics of Energy, Global Health Governance, RSIS Commentary, IISS Strategic Dossier, and Peking University’s China International Strategy Review and International & Strategic Studies Report. Erickson has published annotated translations of several Chinese articles on maritime strategy.

Erickson is the author of the book Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Development (Jamestown Foundation/Brookings Institution Press, 2013). He is coauthor of two other books: Gulf of Aden Anti-Piracy and China’s Maritime Commons Presence (Jamestown/Brookings, 2015) and Assessing China’s Cruise Missile Ambitions (National Defense University Press, 2014). He has coauthored four additional volumes: Charting China’s International Security Activism (Center for a New American Security, 2015), the CMSI monographs Chinese Antipiracy Operations in the Gulf of Aden (2013) and Chinese Mine Warfare (2009), and the CASI monograph The PLAAF’s Campaign for a Bigger Maritime Role (2019). Erickson is the editor of, and a contributor to, three volumes: Maritime Gray Zone Operations: Challenges and Countermeasures in the Indo-Pacific (Routledge Cass Series: Naval Policy & History, 2022), Chinese Naval Shipbuilding (Naval Institute Press/NIP, 2016/2023), and Proceedings of the 47th History Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics (Univelt, 2015). He is coeditor of, and a contributor to, eleven volumes. This includes seven (in addition to Chinese Naval Shipbuilding) of the eight “Studies in Chinese Maritime Development” books to date, for which he is the series editor; comprising the NIP volumes China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations (2019/2023), Chinese Aerospace Power (2011), China, the U.S., and 21st Century Sea Power (2010), China Goes to Sea (2009/2021), China’s Energy Strategy (2008), and China’s Future Nuclear Submarine Force (2007); as well as the forthcoming NWC Press books Chinese Amphibious Warfare: Prospects for a Cross-Strait Invasion and Going Global? China’s Naval Transformation. It also includes Basing and Forward Presence in the Asia-Pacific (NIP, 2014), the CMSI volume China’s Near Seas Combat Capabilities (2014), and the NWC Newport Paper China’s Nuclear Force Modernization (2005).

Erickson is co-founder of China SignPost™ (www.chinasignpost.com), an analytic portal covering key China-related developments; particularly natural resource, technology, industry, and trade issues. Erickson’s personal research website, China Analysis from Original Sources (www.andrewerickson.com), posts and curates content offering insights into China and its impact around the world.

John Bew is Professor of History and Foreign Policy at the War Studies Department of King's College London and has been described as the "leading British historian of generation". Having begun his career in Cambridge University, John was awarded the 2015 Philip Leverhulme Prize for International Studies and in 2013-4 became the youngest ever holder of the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. He is a contributing writer at the New Statesman and an experienced radio and television broadcaster. John is the author of five books including Castlereagh: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2011), which was a book of the year in The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, Sunday Telegraph, Total Politics, and BBC Parliament’s Booktalk. Other books include a co-written work, Talking to Terrorists: Making Peace in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country (Columbia University Press, 2009), which was named in Foreign Policy magazine’s Global Thinkers Book Club, and the critically-acclaimed Realpolitik: A History (Oxford University Press, 2015). His most recent book is Citizen Clem: A Life of Clement Attlee (Riverrun, 2016) which was a beststeller and book of the year in The Sunday Times, Times, Spectator and New Statesman and won the 2016 Parliamentary Book Award for Best Book by a Non-Parliamentarian. John was born in Belfast in 1980, educated at Cambridge, and lives in London.

A lifetime career on Wall Street has given Milton Ezrati an intimate understanding of how economic and financial forces can affect every aspect of people's lives. In addition to informing his investment decisions, he has used this understanding to assess broad trends and frequently comment on economic, policy, and geopolitical matters in scholarly and more general publications. His first book, Kawari, investigated the changes Japan will have to make to revitalize its economy and its society. His latest book, Thirty Tomorrows, investigates the aging trends throughout the developed world and the changes these economies and societies will have to make to cope as well as protect their prosperity. You can follow his commentary at http://www.thirtytomorrows.com.

Fiona Hill is the Robert Bosch Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. From 2017-2019 she was on leave from Brookings and served as the Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe and Russia at the US National Security Council. From 2006-2009, she was the National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. Prior to joining Brookings, she was director of strategic planning at The Eurasia Foundation in Washington, DC, and held a number of positions directing technical assistance and research projects at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Hill holds an A.M. in Soviet Studies and Ph.D. in History from Harvard University; an M.A. degree in Russian and Modern History from St. Andrews University in Scotland; and has pursued studies at Moscow's Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.