| 1:30 – 2:30 PM | McGhee Library, ICC | Register here
Join Professor Andrew Scobell and Dr. Yi Li for a discussion of their recent report, Who Are China’s Diplomats? Beyond the “Wolf Warrior” Hype. As diplomats from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have drawn attention for combative rhetoric and aggressive actions, the label “wolf warrior diplomats” has become increasingly common—but how accurate is it? Drawing on rare quantitative analysis of contemporary PRC diplomats, Scobell and Li examine the key characteristics of the senior officials shaping China’s diplomacy under Xi Jinping. The event will be moderated by Dr. Jennifer Staats, associate director of the RAND China Research Center and a senior political scientist at RAND.
Andrew Scobell is an adjunct professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. From 2021 to 2025 he served as a distinguished fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. Between 2010 and 2021 Scobell was a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation’s offices in Arlington, Virginia, focused on Indo-Pacific security issues. He has published extensively on Chinese security and foreign policy, including China’s Search for Security (Columbia University Press, 2012) co-authored with Andrew J. Nathan. During late 2025 Scobell was a visiting scholar at the China in the World Centre at Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.
Yi Li was a research analyst in the China Program at the United States Institute of Peace between 2023 and 2025. He earned a PhD in cultural anthropology from Case Western Reserve University in 2023. Li’s research interests focus on China’s political institutions, Sino-Tibetan relations and political culture.