“This talk will invite robust audience engagement on a topic of interest to all: China’s place in a changing world. The talk will begin with a lively back-and-forth between Steve Marsheid and Terry Cooke on three focal issues pertinent to the topic: (1) China’s exercise of soft power (economic & cultural), hard power (militarization), and sharp power (economic coercion, as cited by last week’s G7 leaders) internationally; (2) China’s intertwined interests in Ukraine and Taiwan; and (3) China’s bid to build an alternative to the U.S./Western-led liberal, rules-based, democratic global order.
This will set the stage for a longer-than-typical audience involvement segment, structured not strictly as Q&A but more so as open discussion on these and other sub-topics. To engage the maximum number of people in productive and enjoyable consideration of the myriad perspectives that can be brought to bear on this broad topic, we encourage all participants to cultivate a Taoist approach – led more be questions than advocacy of fixed positions and favoring brevity over discursiveness. The idea is that we’re all like the blind-folded Indian sages feeling different parts of the elephant. The whole will ultimately best be apprehended by attending to all the individual perspectives.”
Chairman, Still Waters Green Technology
Steve is Chairman of Still Waters Green Technology, a UK based renewable energy developer. He serves as independent non-executive director of four publicly listed companies: Fanhua, Inc., Jinko Solar Inc., ZZ Capital International Ltd., and Hexindai. Steve is also a trustee emeritus of Princeton-in-Asia. From 1998-2006, Steve worked for GE Capital. During his time with GE, Steve led GE Capital’s business development activities in China and Asia Pacific, primarily acquisitions and direct investments. Prior to GE, Steve worked with the Boston Consulting Group throughout Asia. Steve was a banker for ten years in London, Chicago, New York, Hong Kong and Beijing with Chase Manhattan Bank and First National Bank of Chicago. Steve began his career with the US-China Business Council, in Washington D.C. and Beijing. Steve earned a BA in East Asian Studies from Princeton University in 1976, an MA in international affairs from Johns Hopkins University in 1980, and an MBA from Columbia University in 1991, where he was class valedictorian. He lives in suburban Chicago with his wife and three children.
Scholar, diplomat, and author
Terry Cooke founded ReGen250 in 2011 as a 501c3 public-private platform to foster community regeneration through environmental initiatives with global reach. In 2014, our China Partnership of Greater Philadelphia (CPGP) initiative to bring low carbon solutions to industrial parks in China became one of only 36 competitively-selected EcoPartnerships under the U.S. Department of State’s and U.S. Departments of Energy’s U.S.-China EcoPartnership program.
In FY2019 and 2020, Terry taught a required masters-level course the University of Pennsylvania’s International Masters of Public Administration degree program under Fox Leadership International and the School of Liberal and Professional Studies. CPGP served as the principal case-study in the syllabus for “China and the U.S. in the 21st Century: Sub-National Sino-American Relations.”
Terry publishes the TEA Collaborative, a blogsite regularly examines Technology, Energy & Environment, and macro-development Ambitions in China. The Wilson Center published his book Sustaining U.S.-China Cooperation in Clean Energy in September 2012.
Previously from 2006-8, Terry served as Director for Asian Corporate Partnership at the World Economic Forum, the host of the Davos Annual Meeting and the ‘Summer Davos’ in China. In 2003, Terry retired with the rank of Counselor as a career-member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Commercial Service following tours in Taipei, Berlin, Tokyo & Shanghai.
Terry received his Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985, his MA from UCB in 1981 and his BA from Princeton University in 1976. He speaks Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Nepali.
