Experts

Harry Harding

Faculty Senior Fellow

Fast Facts

  • Specialist on Asia and U.S.-Asian relations
  • UVA University Professor Emeritus
  • UVA professor of public policy emeritus
  • Founding dean of UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy
  • Expertise on Asia, China, U.S.-China relations, Cultural Revolution

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • American Defense and Security
  • World Happenings
  • Asia
  • Economic Issues

Harry Harding, faculty senior fellow, is a specialist on Asia and U.S.-Asian relations. His major publications include Organizing China: The Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949-1966China’s Second Revolution: Reform after MaoA Fragile Relationship: The United States and China since 1972; and the chapter on the Cultural Revolution in the Cambridge History of China. His edited volumes include China’s Foreign Relations in the 1980s; Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955: A Joint Reassessment of a Critical Decade (co-edited with Yuan Ming); and The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know (co-edited with Francine R. Frankel).

A University Professor Emeritus and professor of public policy emeritus at the University of Virginia, Harding is also adjunct chair professor in the College of Social Science at National Chengchi University in Taipei, where he holds a Yushan Scholarship, the highest honor awarded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education. He has recently held visiting appointments at the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Harding served as the founding dean of UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy between 2009 and 2014. Before joining the Batten School, he held faculty appointments at Swarthmore College and Stanford University and was a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. From 1995 to 2005, he was dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, and from 2005 to 2007 was director of research and analysis at Eurasia Group, a political risk research and advisory firm based in New York. He has served on the boards of several educational and nonprofit institutions, as well as on the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Science and Technology and the U.S. Defense Policy Board. A graduate of Princeton in public and international affairs, he holds a PhD in political science from Stanford University.

Harry Harding News Feed

Have major recent developments in China and the United States raised the possibility that the U.S.-China relationship, which has become increasingly strained over the last 10 years, might now move in new and more positive directions? The first panel discusses the November 2020 elections in the United States, providing an analysis of the election campaigns, the electoral process, the outcomes of the elections, and the transition from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration. It will then examine the Fifth Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee in October, which discussed the foreign and domestic economic policies underlying China’s new five-year plan that will begin in 2021. The second panel analyzes the implications of these events for Chinese policy toward the U.S. and American policy toward China, assessing the prospects for both change and continuity.
Harry Harding Miller Center Presents
In thinking about what spades might represent, I eventually recognized that that they are, literally, shovels, and then recalled Khrushchev’s oft-quoted remarks at a reception at the Polish Embassy in Moscow in 1956 in which he told the Western ambassadors in attendance, “We will bury you.” That was later interpreted to mean not that Soviet Union would crush the West in a military confrontation if the Cold War turned hot, but rather that socialism would outperform capitalism and thus the Soviet Union would outlive the West and be present at its funeral. I then realized that China may actually see spades, more than clubs and diamonds, as its most important trump suit.
Harry Harding The Diplomat
Join us for a virtual edition of the Ambassador William C. Battle Symposium on American Diplomacy as we take an in-depth look at U.S.–Chinese relations during a time of global upheaval. You can join us for all of the presentations, or just some of them. Feel free to come and go as needed.
Harry Harding Miller Center Presents
"Ordinary people are taking these precautions very, very seriously as their responsibility," said Harry Harding, a professor of public policy at the University of Virginia and a China expert, who spoke to Fortune from Taiwan. "You have so many masks on the street, and going into any building everyone is now scanned for fevers."
Harry Harding Fortune
For more than six months, widespread protests calling for greater autonomy and democracy have swept over Hong Kong. In early January, Taiwan will hold its quadrennial presidential and legislative elections. These developments reflect the emergence and consolidation of distinctive local identities in both Hong Kong and Taiwan—identities rooted not in ethnicity, since both places are predominantly Han Chinese, but in social and political values and political and economic systems that have become markedly different from those on mainland China. In light of this, China is attempting to increase its control over Hong Kong and to push for unification with Taiwan. It is claiming that its economic and governance models are just as legitimate and often more effective than those associated with the West. In response, the United States is increasing its interest in the success of Taiwan’s democratic institutions and market economy, and in the preservation of autonomy and freedom in Hong Kong, even as its own domestic institutions are coming under stress. Join us for an assessment of how these facts have become central to the growing competition.
Harry Harding Miller Center Presents
The 2019 protests in Hong Kong have riveted the world, as their focus has expanded from an extradition bill to alleged police misconduct, Hong Kong’s electoral system, and the broader relationship between Hong Kong and the government in Beijing. Understanding the history of the Sino-British negotiations, the deeper social, economic and political roots of the protests and the responses of Beijing and the Hong Kong government are of utmost importance into assess the future course for the city and proposed unification with Taiwan.
Harry Harding The Stimson Center