The Dean Rusk Center at the University of Georgia is to host a conference on U.S.-China trade relations that will include panel discussions in Atlanta on Thursday, April 14, and in Athens on Friday, April 15.
“This conference will deal with all aspects of government, business and legal issues affecting U.S.-China relations,” C. Donald Johnson, former ambassador and U.S. congressman, who is serving as director of the Rusk Center, told GlobalAtlanta last week.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Theodore Kassinger is to provide the keynote address on April 14 at the Sheraton Colony Square hotel in Midtown. The April 14 program includes an investment panel and a services and market access panel that is to feature representatives of an investment bank in Beijing and senior economic and commercial officers from China’s embassy in Washington.
The April 15 program in Athens features panels on agriculture, textiles, intellectual property and export controls. Max Cleland, former U.S. senator from Georgia who is currently a member of the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank of the U.S., is to speak.
In 1998, Mr. Johnson was nominated to the rank of ambassador by President Clinton and served for two years as chief textile negotiator and principal adviser to both the president and the U.S. Trade Representative on all textile and apparel trade matters. He is a former U.S. congressman from Royston having served from 1993-94.
The program is being co-sponsored by the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs, the Georgia Department of Economic Development and the Georgia China Alliance, a public-private initiative .
The papers delivered at the conference are to be published in the Georgia Journal of International Law.
The cost of the conference is $40. Checks are to be made payable to the UGA School of Law, Rusk Center. After April 7, reservations for lunch are not guaranteed. For more information, send an e-mail to Nelda Parker at nparker@uga.edu or call the Rusk Center at (706) 542-5135.