Suisheng Zhao recently was named one of the world’s most influential scholars on China’s international affairs, according to research by Shanghai International Studies University.
Chinese President Xi Jinping began his recent visit to the United States with a stop in Seattle, where a Sept. 22 dinner in his honor drew more than 700 businesspeople and dignitaries from China and the U.S. Among those in attendance was Suisheng Zhao, director of the Center for China-U.S. Cooperation at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies.
“[Xi] started in Seattle because Seattle is a Pacific Rim city facing the Pacific, and there are so many companies doing business with China — like Microsoft, like Boeing,” Zhao says. “He sees that type of city as very friendly to China. These are the people he sees as those who will support a good relationship between China and the U.S., especially in business and technology.”
Zhao recently was named one of the world’s most influential scholars on China’s international affairs, according to research by Shanghai International Studies University. He was tied for sixth place based on number of citations in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) database for the five-year period ending in 2013. The SSCI, produced by Thomson Reuters, tracks citations from nearly 2,500 journals of social sciences across more than 50 disciplines. Zhao also is editor of the center’s Journal of Contemporary China, the world’s top-ranked China study journal.
“This visit, at this time, is a very critical moment for the U.S. to rethink how China is rising,” Zhao says of Xi’s conversations with President Obama during his time in Washington last week. “It’s a very important time for the leaders of these two countries to talk about long-term strategic issues and also some very urgent issues, like cybersecurity. I think that’s what this visit is about.”