Advanced Seminar in PPE / Penn Global Seminar / SNF Paideia Program Course (Spring 2025)
More than forty years after the normalization of relations between the United States and China, this “most consequential bilateral relationship” today faces new and fundamental challenges with global implications. There is no ready template for a relationship between two great powers that are deeply interdependent, yet increasingly see one another as rivals and possibly adversaries. The need for original thinking, and new voices, is urgent.
Designed as a policy task force, taught in coordination with a similar course to be taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and modeled on the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations, this course will introduce students to the most pressing issues in U.S.-China relations –– including security, trade, climate, technology competition, academic exchange, and human rights –– and invite them to deliberate on and formulate recommendations for U.S. policy towards China. Each student will be required to complete a policy paper on some aspect of U.S.-China relations, and the task force as a whole will issue a collective final report.
As a Penn Global Seminar, at the end of the course, students will travel to China to meet in-person with their Chinese counterparts at Tsinghua University, and also to present their policy papers and recommendations to relevant interested audiences in Beijing and Shanghai.
Instructor: Neysun Mahboubi, Director of the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations
Announcement: https://ppe.sas.upenn.edu/news/ppe-host-penn-global-seminar-spring-2025-%E2%80%9Cpolicy-task-force-us-china-relations