Experts

Brantly Womack

Fast Facts

  • Retired C.K. Yen Chair at the Miller Center
  • Expert on China
  • Received China Friendship Award for his work with Chinese universities

 

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • Asia
  • Economic Issues
  • Trade

Brantly Womack is a faculty senior fellow at the Miller Center and professor emeritus of foreign affairs at the University of Virginia. He received his BA degree in politics and philosophy from the University of Dallas, and after a Fulbright in philosophy at the University of Munich, earned his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago. 

Womack is the author of Recentering Pacific Asia (Cambridge University Press 2023), Asymmetry and International Relationships (Cambridge University Press 2016), China Among Unequals: Asymmetric International Relationships in Asia (World Scientific Press 2010), and China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry (Cambridge University Press 2006), as well as more than 100 articles and book chapters.

His co-edited book, Rethinking the Triangle: Washington-Beijing-Taipei (World Scientific Press 2016), was the product of a series of five international conferences that began at the Miller Center. He edited China’s Rise in Historical Perspective (Rowman and Littlefield 2010), the product of a lecture series at the Miller Center, and Contemporary Chinese Politics in Historical Perspective (Cambridge 1991). In 2011, Womack received the China Friendship Award for his work with Chinese universities. He holds honorary positions at Jilin University, East China Normal University, and Zhongshan (Sun Yat-Sen) University. 

Brantly Womack News Feed

President Putin has made a major blunder that is tragic for Russia as well as for the Ukraine. However, Russia is a big country with lots of resources and a high opinion of itself. It does not need a patron.
Brantly Womack Gulan
President Vladimir Putin’s historic blunder in Ukraine has created a crisis in Europe that is costly for China but at the same time opens for it an opportunity for a new role in global politics. The costs are real and will continue to grow as long as the Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine continues. China’s tactical opportunity to contribute to mediation creates a strategic opportunity to move beyond the strategy of peaceful rise in a given international environment to one of providing key coordination in a post-hegemonic world.
Brantly Womack Aljazeera Centre for Studies
Yogi Berra’s famous line about seizing the non-choice is an apt description for China’s reaction thus far to Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine. On the one hand, China abstained from the UN vote condemning the invasion, on the other, China’s foreign minister reiterated the longstanding foreign policy commitment to respect sovereignty in his conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart. There are mixed opinions among the Chinese public about the invasion, but the government has deeper reasons for kicking the fork down the road. The last thing China wants is a new Cold War.
Brantly Womack Miller Center Russia-Ukraine blog
With Russian ties to Europe all but severed, Russia will lean even more on its friendship with China, says Brantly Womack, senior fellow at the Miller Center and professor of foreign affairs at the University of Virginia.
Brantly Womack Fortune
When Brantly Womack, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Virginia and Senior Faculty Fellow at the Miller Center, retired from his professorship at the University last May, there was a noticeable loss in the Politics department’s coverage of contemporary China and Chinese politics. No classes on Chinese politics are being offered this semester, and the Politics department has not yet instated a replacement for Womack as the department’s China expert. This was a catalyst for Womack's decision to host a four-part lecture series entitled "China and the Recentering of East Asia" through the University’s own East Asia Center, beginning Thursday and with three more planned through Oct. 7.
Brantly Womack The Cavalier Daily
Brantly Womack believes that understanding China is the key to understanding the next era of economic and geopolitical power. And in order to look forward, we first must look back.
Brantly Womack UVA Today