Bates Gill Named Director Of New Brookings Center On Northeast Asia Policy Studies

The Brookings Institution is pleased to announce that Bates Gill, specialist in Chinese foreign policy and security issues, and U.S.-China Relations, joins Brookings as the director of the newly formed Brookings Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies (CNAPS), and as a senior fellow. The new Center aims to help shape the debate over U.S. foreign policy toward this critical part of the world, to facilitate the exchange of ideas between Americans and peoples of the Asia-Pacific, and to provide a venue for talented individuals from the region to interact with Brookings scholars, with one another, and with the broader U.S. policymaking community.

Each year, as many as six individuals from Northeast Asia will be invited to spend ten months at the new Center. Fellows will be selected from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Russia, and Taiwan, and may come out of government, academia, journalism, or business. Visiting fellows will work on individual and collaborative research projects tied to Northeast Asia and will participate in the full range of Center activities, including research, the Brookings Northeast Asia Roundtable, and other conferences.

“Under Bates’ superb leadership, our new Center should be a major hub of study on this vital and dynamic region,” said Brookings President Michael H. Armacost.

“The creation of the Brookings Center on Northeast Asia Policy Studies is a response to the immense and still growing importance of this part of the world. Bates Gill is an experienced administrator and a prominent American authority on Chinese foreign and defense policy. We are excited about this new Center and its first director,” said Richard Haass, who heads Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.

Gill comes to Brookings from the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where he was the director of the East Asia Proliferation Project. Formerly, Gill headed the Project on Security and Arms Control in East Asia at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in Sweden from 1993 to 1997, before which he held the Fei Yiming Chair in Comparative Politics at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing, China in 1992-1993.

Gill’s publications include Arms, Transparency, and Security in Southeast Asia, co-edited (1997); China’s Arms Acquisitions from Abroad: A Quest for “Superb and Secret Weapons” (1995); and Chinese Arms Transfers (1992). His work has appeared in various publications, including China Quarterly, Pacific Review, Asian Survey, Orbis, China Economic Review, Far Eastern Economic Review, Jane’s Defence Weekly, Aviation Week & Space Technology, and Business Times.

Gill received his Ph.D. in foreign affairs and his M.A. from the University of Virginia.