2025 China Town Hall

           

     

CHINA Town Hall (CTH), a two-part program that provides a snapshot of the current U.S.-China relationship and examines how that relationship reverberates at the local level. The two-part event features a national webcast as well as a local discussion.

The 2025 CHINA Town Hall program will take place on Thursday, April 24, from 3:30 PM to 5:30 PM Pacific, to discuss President Trump’s China policy 100 days in.

The national webcast is scheduled from 3:30-4:30 PM Pacific, featuring speakers Ryan Hass, Director of John L. Thorton China Center at the Brookings Institution, Matthew Turpin, Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Lingling Wei, Chief China Correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. 

The local in-person discussion is scheduled from 4:30-5:30 PM Pacific Time, right after the national webcast. 

The Washington State China Relations Council (WSCRC), World Affairs Council Seattle, and the University of Washington’s East Asia Center and China Studies Program are pleased to invite you to join both sessions.

This is an in-person program hosted by Dorsey & Whitney LLP free for Washington China Relations Council and World Affairs Council members, and students! Non-member registration will be $10. Registration is required. 

Event Location: 
Dorsey & Whitney LLP
Columbia Center, 701 5th Avenue, Floor 61
Seattle, WA 98104

REGISTER HERE

Local Discussion Speakers

Dr. Spencer Cohen is the Principal and Founder of High Peak Strategy LLC, an international trade and economics research consulting firm based in Seattle, WA. Dr. Cohen consults and writes extensively on international trade, China’s economy, leading industries, and regional economic analysis. He has written opinion pieces in the South China Morning Post, The Daily Guardian (India), Puget Sound Business Journal, and Seattle Business Magazine. He works with ports, international trade associations, corporations, and economic development organizations across the U.S. and abroad. Prior to forming High Peak Strategy, Spencer served as senior economist with a Seattle-based economics consulting firm. He has also held policy and research roles with the State of Washington.

Spencer is a 2021-2023 Public Intellectuals Program fellow (seventh cohort) with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He is also an affiliate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington. Dr. Cohen has a PhD in geography from the University of Washington, an MA in China Studies, also from the University of Washington, and BA in mathematics and history from the University of Connecticut.

John VerWey is an advisor in the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s (PNNL) Global Security, Technology and Policy group. In this role he supports U.S. government sponsor efforts to protect and promote critical technologies for economic and national security. His work at PNNL focuses on supply chain security, investment screening, export controls, and defense industrial base integrity. He is also a non-resident fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) and The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). 

Before joining PNNL, VerWey worked as a civil servant at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) and the U.S. Department of Commerce. In these positions he analyzed the effects of international trade, supply chains, Chinese industrial policies, export controls, and foreign direct investment on U.S. advanced technology industries, with a focus on microelectronics. He also served as a staff liaison to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States at USTR and supported investigations for the executive branch and congressional committees on economic competitiveness issues at the USITC and Commerce. Prior to federal government service, he consulted for The European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee and worked as a program manager at the American Enterprise Institute.

VerWey’s research on the semiconductor industry has been published by the United States International Trade Commission, the Journal of International Commerce and Economics, IEEE-Computer, and CSET, among others, and he has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission

Dori Jones Yang is an award-winning author, journalist, and speaker. Dori worked for eight years in the 1980s as Hong Kong bureau chief for Business Week, covering China during the pivotal years when it went from isolation to engagement with the outside world. Educated in history at Princeton and in international relations at Johns Hopkins SAIS, she has written eight books, including her most recent, When the Red Gates Opened: A Memoir of China’s Reawakening.

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, she has traveled throughout China over forty years and spoken about her books across the United States, as well as in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Most recently, she has given lectures about contemporary China on cruise ships and at community groups in Greater Seattle. For more information, see https://dorijonesyang.com/.