Asia Pacific Leads in International Students

In the 2010-2011 academic year, nearly 462,000 students from Asian countries studied at US universities and colleges. Including 5,610 students from Oceania, Asia Pacific international students accounted for 65% of the total. The number of Asia Pacific students studying in the US grew 6% from the previous year.

Nearly every year, US institutions of higher education welcome an increasing number of students from abroad. Among the leading places of origin, six of the top ten are Asian countries, with China, India, and South Korea ranking 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd overall. The total number of students from these six countries account for over half, 55%, of all foreign students in the United States.

The large influx of students from the Asia Pacific has resulted from a combination of increased demand for high-quality education among the rapidly growing Asian economies and the efforts of American institutions to increase their recruiting activities abroad, particularly turning their focus to Asia. Because international students tend to pay higher tuition than their state-subsidized American peers, many schools in the US are increasing their marketing efforts in Asia as they face the strain from shrinking public budgets. A fall 2011 enrollment survey of colleges and universities by IIE revealed that of the institutions that increased their overseas recruitment efforts, the majority concentrated on Asia. US educational institutions expanded their recruitment in China by 30%, in India by 19%, in Southeast Asia by 19%, in Korea by 15%, and in Japan by 7%.

As a result, the number of Chinese students in American schools has grown particularly fast, by 23% in the past year alone! While this represents a great opportunity for exchange between American and Chinese students, and benefits to local economies, the increase has not been without problems. As more US institutions rely on third party recruiters, largely to overcome the cultural-linguistic barriers between the two countries, a growing number of Chinese students who arrive in the US find themselves to be an ill-fit for their new schools. Some American professors have struggled to teach students who were admitted with falsified, exaggerated, or plagiarized application materials prepared by Chinese recruiting agencies for sometimes exorbitant fees. Both the recruiting industry in China and American educational institutions are attempting to ameliorate these problems by demanding greater accountability from recruiters, and providing more on-campus resources to help international students to succeed, such as intensive English-language courses.

As US Study Abroad Rise, Rise in Trips to Asia

At the same time, to meet goals of preparing their students for global careers, US universities and colleges are sending a growing number of American students to study abroad, with Asia becoming an increasingly popular destination. According to the 2011 Open Doors report, from 2000 to 2010 the share of US college students currently studying in Asia has doubled: from 6% to 12%. A fifth of the top 25 study abroad destinations for the 2009/2010 academic year were in the Asia Pacific, with China ranked fifth, Australia sixth, and Japan, India, and New Zealand ranked 11^th, 14^th, and 19^th respectively. Each of the most popular destinations in Asia enjoyed a rise in American students from the year before, with India seeing an increase of an incredible 44%!

International student exchange can also benefit bilateral international relations. Last October, over 300 education leaders and government officials attended the US-India Higher Education Summit, held by both governments at Georgetown University, with the goal of strengthening bilateral educational cooperation and exchange. In her opening remarks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named educational collaboration “a driving force in our strategic dialogue with the Government of India.” The State Department has launched a numerous of initiatives and resources for US and international students, such as EducationUSA, as part of its efforts to promote such educational exchanges.

To capitalize on these trends, education and government officials throughout Asia are working to make their institutions more attractive study abroad destinations. South Korea now has over 120 schools that offer programs in English and the Japanese government has launched an initiative to boost the number of international students to 300,000 over the next decade through scholarships for foreign students and partnerships between top Japanese schools and overseas universities. Meanwhile, America remains the destination of choice for many of Asia’s young people, such as Wenzy Duan of Beijing. Explaining her dream to attend school in the US, Duan told MSNBC: “In America, I can experience more…maybe all kinds of things I will never experience in China.” If Wenzy gets her wish, perhaps she will be among the next batch of international students to celebrate Lunar New Year on campus in America.

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2. Fast and Furious: Asia-Pacific Fastest Growing Market for US Exports
3. Boom Times in U.S.-Southeast Asia Relations

1. Pakistan to replace Indonesia as country with largest Muslim population by 2030

The world’s Muslim population is projected to grow at twice the rate of non-Muslims over the next 20 years, increasing by 35% to 2.2 billion people in 2030, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. Asia holds the four largest Muslim populations – Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh –together containing 709 million Muslims in 2010. That number is projected to increase to 919 million in 2030, a 30% jump.

2. Small Numbers but Steady Growth of US Students in Japan

In contrast with a dwindling number of Japanese exchange students, more Americans studied in Japan in 2009 than ever before;  5,784 contributed to a steady upward trend. The number of US students in Japan has increased 57% over the course of the decade.

3. Japan’s Tōhoku Earthquake Region Matters for America

The record-breaking March 11^th earthquake off the coast of Japan caused skyscrapers to sway in Tokyo and tremors across the main island of Honshu, but it was the Tōhoku region, Japan’s northeast, that bore the brunt of nature’s fury. The three Pacific-facing prefectures nearest the epicenter, Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima were devastated by the subsequent tsunami.

4. ASEAN’s Importance

ASEAN’s geostrategic importance stems from many factors, including: the strategic location of member countries, the large shares of global trade that pass through regional waters, and the alliances and partnerships which the United States shares with ASEAN member states.

5. Derek Mitchell’s Senate Nomination Hearing for US Special Representative to Burma

The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened to consider the nomination of Derek Mitchell to be US Special Representative and Policy Coordinator for Burma with Ambassadorial rank. The Obama Administration completed its Burma policy review in September 2009 and announced its intention to pursue a dual-track approach that integrates both sanctions and engagement to achieve results in Burma.

6. US-Southeast Asia Trade Triples over Last Two Decades

Over the last twenty years, US trade volume with Southeast Asia has tripled, from $45.9 billion in 1990 to $176 billion in 2010. During the same period, total US foreign trade also tripled, so the share of US trade with Southeast Asia has held steady at just over five percent.

7. The US Seafood Market and Southeast Asia

Stagnant fish stocks, growing demand for seafood products, and chronic overfishing are constraining the US fishery sector but are bringing opportunities for countries with developing fishery sectors. In particular, Southeast Asian countries are well positioned to pick up slack in the US seafood market.

8. America is second largest home for Koreans living abroad

In the 1970s, there were about 100,000 Korean Americans but by 2009 that number had skyrocketed to an estimated 1.35 million. Koreans account for about one in ten Asian Americans and about 0.4% of the overall US population.

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2. Welcome to ASEAN Matters for America / America Matters for ASEAN
3. US Census Reports 17.3 Million Asians in America

In the report, American experts addressed the challenge of assessing the implications of Southeast Asia’s higher profile in Asia. It found that:

a) Competition between China and the United States has increased Southeast Asia’s strategic significance in the Indo-Pacific region.

b) Southeast Asians believe their growing trade relationship with China is compatible with continued diplomatic and security hedging against China. Whether an increasingly dense and complex economic relationship and continued hedging is sustainable in the future is not clear.

c) The Association of Southeast Asian Nation’s (ASEAN) “soft coherence” both amplifies Southeast Asian states’ voices in Asia and protects their autonomy. ASEAN’s utility is often under-appreciated outside the region.

This report builds on the ongoing ASEAN Matters for America/America Matters for ASEAN Initiative and a recent special issue of the ISEAS journal Contemporary Southeast Asia on United States bilateral relations with selected Southeast Asian countries.

To read the full report, download it here (PDF).

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2. US Direct Investment in Southeast Asia Increased by $23 Billion in 2010
3. American Volunteerism in Southeast Asia: Another Step Forward in Re-Engagement

Norman Rockwell - The Peace Corps - JFK's Bold Legacy, 1966

American volunteerism is expanding in Southeast Asia. The Peace Corps, a volunteer organization affiliated with the US government that is celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year, is growing beyond its traditional posts in the Philippines and Thailand to include active presence in Cambodia and Indonesia. Soon, American volunteers—not affiliated with the Corps—will also be active in Malaysia. This regional expansion of American volunteerism is bolstering US-Southeast Asia relations, as it reinforces mutual interests despite a complicated history and builds a stronger foundation for closer ties between the United States and countries in the region.

Following the establishment of its Cambodia operation in 2007, the Peace Corps returned to Indonesia in 2010. By mid-2011, 45 volunteers had taken up two-year assignments teaching English at schools in East Java. By 2012, the Peace Corps hopes to triple the number of its volunteers since its return to Indonesia.

When Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak met President Obama in 2010, he introduced a proposal to bring American volunteers to Malaysia “specifically to teach English.” In response, the US and Malaysian governments have negotiated an agreement that would let thirty American volunteers serve in rural areas of Malaysia later in 2011.

National Geographic Peace Corps Cover

This recent expansion of American volunteerism is surprising because a quick look into its complicated history in Southeast Asia would suggest a different trajectory. During the Peace Corps’ initial brief presence in Indonesia from 1963 to 1965, volunteers faced harassment from Indonesian Communists and suspicion from prickly Indonesian nationalists. Because of domestic turmoil and US involvements in the country during the Cold War, Cambodia was off limits to Americans until the country stabilized in the mid-1990s. Only American volunteerism in Malaysia has a less problematic history, as the Peace Corps exited Malaysia in 1983 because of the country’s rapid economic development.

However, a changed international environment after 9/11 and Southeast Asia’s continued importance to the United States has led to US government reengagement with the region. This reengagement means cooperation beyond security and strategic issues, and includes volunteerism. In 2007, the US government decided to lift a ban on direct bilateral aid to Cambodia that had been in effect since Prime Minister Hun Sen seized power in 1997. In 2010, the United States and Indonesia also committed “to broaden, deepen, and elevate bilateral relations,” under the rubric of the US-Indonesia Comprehensive Partnership. New leadership in the United States and Malaysia, furthermore, has aligned to bring bilateral relations to a higher level. While President Obama declared himself “America’s first Pacific president,” Prime Minister Najib directed his cabinet colleagues to “look West.”

Inviting American volunteers is an obvious sign that these Southeast Asian countries are interested in better relations with the United States.

Notwithstanding criticisms about the Peace Corps’ operation and costs, the extended presence of American volunteers is good US strategy. After their return from service, American volunteers are, in the words of  a critic of the Peace Corps, “aware of—and frequently very committed to—global development” and form a constituency of Americans with personal ties to their service countries. There are few better ways to sustain and develop US links with the region than expanding the number of Americans with personal and professional ties to Southeast Asia.

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Although the amount remains 15 percent below its 2008 peak, this 4.3-percent increase from 2009 put Southeast Asia back on the upward trend that it had sustained since earlier in the decade. Southeast Asia’s FDI stock in the United States has increased fourfold from its 2000 level at $5.6 billion, and the region is the third-largest FDI source in the Asia-Pacific behind Japan and Australia in 2010.

Southeast Asia’s impact to the US economy is larger than these figures might suggest. For instance, according to a BEA report, companies in Singapore, from which the region’s FDI stock in the United States overwhelmingly originates, controlled $34.8 billion of assets in 2009, employed almost 30,000 people, and sent out $524 million as US exports of goods. By contrast, firms based in China—a country more than twice the size of Southeast Asia in population—owned assets worth $19 billion, employed over 4,000 people, and contributed $120 million to US exports.

More remarkably, Southeast Asia has retained its position as the largest destination of US FDI in the Asia-Pacific, ahead of Australia, Japan, and China. Another new BEA dataset shows that of the $611 billion total US FDI going to the Asia-Pacific in 2010, over a quarter ended up in Southeast Asia. US FDI in Southeast Asia amounted to $157 billion in 2010, an increase of 17.5 percent or $23.4 billion over the previous year. The FDI figure for Southeast Asia has increased by almost a quarter since 2008 and is three times as large as in 2000.

Nearly all of Southeast Asian FDI in the United States originates from Singapore and Malaysia. In 2010, these two countries accounted for 97.8 percent of Southeast Asia’s FDI in the United States. Singapore’s figure was $21.8 billion, and Malaysia’s amounted to $362 million. The picture is similar for US direct investment in Southeast Asia. Over two-thirds of US direct investment in Southeast Asia, totaling $106 billion, went to Singapore in 2010. Together with Singapore,Indonesia ($15.5 billion), Malaysia ($16.0 billion), and Thailand ($12.7 billion) hosted over 95 percent of US direct investment in Southeast Asia in 2010.

Of the $157 billion the United States has invested in Southeast Asia, 46 percent went to holding companies ($72.0 billion), 23 percent to manufacturing ($36.9 billion), 9 percent to finance and depository institutions ($14.8 billion). (The BEA does not track the reverse distribution.)

Amid the current hype about China and India, countries in Southeast Asia often get scant attention. But this is unwarranted when it comes to investment ties with the Unites States. Despite the uneven distribution of investment flows with the region, Southeast Asia as a whole remains an attractive destination for US direct investment and a sizable source of FDI to the United States.

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By comparison, the United States sent more merchandise exports to only four other economies in 2010: Canada, the European Union, Mexico, and China. Southeast Asia’s share of US merchandise exports has also remained steady at around 5 percent even as those exports grew by 75 percent in the past decade.

The US states that export the most to Southeast Asia predictably include states abutting the Pacific Ocean—including California, Washington, and Oregon—and export powerhouses—such as Texas, Louisiana, and Illinois. US states as varied as California, Louisiana, Illinois, and New York exported more than $2 billion of merchandise to Southeast Asia in 2010.

However, Southeast Asia is actually also important to a more diverse set of US states than this top 10 list would suggest. While Southeast Asia was the destination of substantial merchandise exports from Washington ($4.92 billion) and Oregon ($3.75 billion) in 2010, these amounts also constituted a considerable share of these two states’ overall exports. One-tenth of Washington’s exports went to Southeast Asia in 2010, and Oregon’s figure was 21 percent. More remarkably, Maine and Idaho sent 28 and 22 percent of their respective merchandise exports to Southeast Asia. Even Arizona, Vermont, and Wyoming—all states for which links with Southeast Asia may not be readily apparent—sent over 10 percent of their exports to the region in 2010.

But US merchandise exports to Southeast Asia are not only notable in amount and share of total exports, they are also growing. Over the last decade, eleven US states that exported merchandise to Southeast Asia in 2010 have at least doubled their figures since 2001. These states are Virginia, Kansas, and Kentucky and the eight states in the top 10 list. Hawai’i and Vermont, in particular, have managed to increase their merchandise exports to Southeast Asia almost fourfold, and thus increased the region’s share of their overall 2010 exports to 14 and 11 percent, respectively.

In line with our recent posts on Asia’s growing importance as a US exports destination and on the US trade patterns with individual Southeast Asian countries, Southeast Asia remains a significant market for US merchandise exports. Southeast Asia also represents one of the better destinations for potential expansion precisely because of the relatively low volume of US exports to the region. Exports to the region are growing much faster for many individual US states than the national average, and for a few, such as Maine, Idaho, and Oregon, Southeast Asia is a substantial export destination.

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Cooperating with its counterparts throughout Southeast Asia, the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore reported these findings in its recently released 2011/2012 ASEAN Business Outlook Survey. The survey, now in its tenth year, analyzes the business environment for American companies by delineating the strengths and weaknesses of doing business in Southeast Asia. This year’s survey presents the collective outlook of senior executives at member companies of American chambers of commerce in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

According to the survey, while corruption, weak rule of law, and local protectionism are perennial concerns to doing business in Southeast Asia, the most challenging countries, such as Indonesia and Vietnam, are the focus of American business expansion in the near future. Vietnam is also the likeliest destination in Southeast Asia for American companies that plan to diversify or expand business from China.

While the survey paints a clearly positive picture of the business environment in Southeast Asia, the whole picture may turn out to be more complex. Those interested in improving the business side of US-Southeast Asia relations should be cautious in drawing overly wide inferences from this survey because its response rate was relatively low (22%) and the membership at local American chambers of commerce may not include all American businesses. As a result, the rosy picture may not have identified all the advantages and disadvantages of doing business in Southeast Asia.

Still, this recommendation should not cloud the fact that the ASEAN Business Outlook Survey is evidence that Southeast Asia is good business for American businesses.

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2. American Volunteerism in Southeast Asia: Another Step Forward in Re-Engagement
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The annual volume of worldwide catch has stayed at about 90 million metric tons since the mid-1990s, but the consumption of seafood is burgeoning. The United States, for instance, imported almost 2.5 million tons of edible fishery products in 2010, in addition to the consumption of domestically harvested seafood. This is a 5.7-percent increase from the quantity imported in 2009 and in sync with a consistent upward trend in US seafood consumption. (Even so, Americans currently eat less than half the government-recommended amount of seafood.) Imported seafood currently constitutes 84% of total US seafood consumption.

At the same time, American seafood producers are having a hard time keeping pace. “Once-productive waters in regions like New England have been hit hard by over-fishing, often followed by lengthy and controversial moratoriums to allow commercial species to recover,” TIME magazine notes. “American fishermen are hard pressed to keep up with domestic demand—and it wouldn’t be ecologically sustainable for long if they tried.”

The combination of sluggish supply and increasing demand of seafood in the United States is creating an opening in the US market. In 2010, the country sustained a trade deficit of almost $7 billion in fish and other marine products, the second-largest natural resource contributor to the national trade deficit after crude oil and natural gas. Southeast Asian countries ($3.4 billion), China ($2.0 billion), and Canada ($1.6 billion) dominated last year’s US imports of seafood products worth $11.2 billion.

Specifically, the United States faced a $3.3-billion deficit in seafood trade with Southeast Asian countries in 2010. This deficit accounted for almost a tenth of US total trade deficit of $37.3 billion with Southeast Asian countries, and almost half of the US trade deficit in fish and other marine products.

While around half of the seafood that the United States imports comes from aquaculture, domestic aquaculture provides only about 5 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States. The prospects of expanding aquaculture in the United States are uncertain because of concerns about its potential harm to the environment, an often unfavorable regulatory framework, and the high costs of maintaining aquacultural operations domestically.

The United States has little choice but to increase seafood imports. As natural seafood stocks are unlikely to meet increased demand and domestic capacity for aquacultural production has plateaued, future increases in supply may only come from foreign aquaculture.

Aquaculture in Southeast Asia is diversified, comprising freshwater fish, aquatic plants, crustaceans, marine fish, and mollusks. Shrimps and freshwater fish constitute the two most highly priced products of Southeast Asian aquaculture. Total output of Southeast Asian aquaculture tripled from two million tons in 1990 to seven million tons in 2005, and annual average growth rates in output in the 2000s more than doubled those during the 1990s.

With such a strong performance, Southeast Asian countries have faced accusations of dumping fisheries products, in particular catfish and shrimps, in the US market since the 2000s. Most recently in April 2011, the US Department of Commerce responded to anti-dumping claims by continuing to impose duties on certain types of seafood imports from Brazil, China, India, Thailand, and Vietnam. Failure to do so, the US government argues, is “likely to lead to continuation or recurrence of dumping and of material injury to an industry in the United States within a reasonably foreseeable time.” Responding to a Vietnamese complaint on the issue, the World Trade Organization circulated a panel report in favor of Vietnam in mid-July 2011 in an effort to settle parts of this trade dispute.

Another potential stumbling block for Southeast Asian countries in the US seafood market is the S.50 Commercial Seafood Consumer Protection Act currently under consideration in the US Senate. The act aims “to strengthen Federal consumer product safety programs and activities with respect to commercially-marketed seafood by directing the Secretary of Commerce to coordinate with the Federal Trade Commission and other appropriate Federal agencies to strengthen and coordinate those programs and activities.” Already, the Thai Department of Export Promotion advised Thai seafood exporters to prepare for the potential adverse effects this act may exert on their products.

Despite past challenges, many Southeast Asian countries are maneuvering to increase their share in the US seafood market. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Indonesia, already the fourth-largest exporter of seafood to the United States, is modernizing its infrastructure as part of an effort to increase its share of the global seafood market. The country seeks to boost its fish exports by more than 70 percent in the next three years.

The opening is there for further Southeast Asian expansion in the US seafood market; it is likely that Southeast Asian exporters will also face rough waters.

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Among our top import sources over the last decade (countries where the total ten-year value of exports exceeded $150 billion), seven out of twenty were in the Asia-Pacific. Of these, China and India were counted among the top ten fastest growing import markets, ranking 2^nd and 4^th respectively. They join the oil exporting nations of Russia, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia in the top five of this list (China and India contribute little to US energy imports).

The graphic below shows the 15 largest markets in the Asia Pacific over the past ten years, as well as the rate of growth in exports over the same period:

According to the US Department of Commerce, imports from the Asia Pacific region are up 79% since 2001, slightly less than the growth of US exports to the region over the same period. This reflects an increase in overall trade with Asia, especially compared with other regions such as the European Union, which only grew 40% in the same period.

While the US may be exporting more to the Asia Pacific than ever before, the trend continues of importing more than it ships out. In 2010 the trade deficit with Asia neared $370 billion.

As the dollar value of the trade deficit with Asia has grown steadily from 2001 to 2010, it is often believed that this reflects an increasing burden on the US economy that is perilously deviating from the norm. However as World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy noted, the trade deficit with Asia has remained “at something like 2 to 3 per cent of the United States’ GDP” for the past 25 years. In 2010 the US trade deficit with Asia amounted to 2.5% of its total GDP.

Despite enjoying trade surpluses with some Asia Pacific partners in recent years, and narrowing the trade gaps with important partners such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, the unequaled bilateral trade deficit with China stands out.  Reaching $273 billion in 2010, it is the largest trade deficit the US has held with any nation in its history.

While the “Made in China” label has become ubiquitous for American consumers, the case of China challenges the traditional notion that the total value of imports from a nation accurately reflect the true balance of trade and subsequent impact on the US economy. Because trade figures assume that imported products are produced in whole by the sending country, they allot the total value of an import to the country that sent it. In an age of globalized supply chains, this fails to reflect the value of the components sourced from multiple countries. As such, China may not benefit from exports to the US as much as the trade figures indicate.

A recent example of this is the popular Apple iPhone, as examined in a report by the Asian Development Bank Institute. Looking at the trade figures alone, imports of iPhones from China contribute $2 billion to the US-China trade deficit.  However, while the final point of assembly for the iPhone is in China, the high-value parts are from elsewhere in Asia and the United States and Europe. According to ADBI, of the $178 wholesale price of the iPhone, only $6.50 of the value comes from the Chinese workers who put it together. Compare this to the $10.75 contribution from US-made parts and design, and that $2 billion deficit with China shown by the trade data is in actuality a $48 million trade surplus. Likewise, of the 41,000 total jobs associated with producing the iPhone, 14,000 are in the US. Those workers earned a total of $750 million—more than twice that of non-US workers.

Trade is not a zero-sum game where imports always represent net losses. Components from Asia, for instance, are important to American manufacturing. Disruptions in imports from Japan following the March earthquake and tsunami impacted factories in the US at a time when manufacturing is driving the nation’s economic recovery. Lower prices on clothing and consumer goods produced in Asia allow American consumers to spend more money on higher value domestically produced goods and services. While it is natural and important for a nation to want to increase its sales abroad, such is the goal of its trading partners as well. In the end, as attractive as China and India’s emerging consumer markets are to US firms, to the rest of the world, America’s markets are just as enticing.

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In his statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mitchell underlines that his

“objective will be to implement US law faithfully and coordinate efforts to advance the common international objectives of bringing about in Burma the unconditional release of all political prisoners, respect for human rights, an inclusive dialogue between the regime and the political opposition, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and ethnic groups that would lead to national reconciliation, and Burma’s adherence to its international obligations, including all UN Security Council resolutions on nonproliferation. To date … the inability of key members of the international community to coordinate their approach to Burma has undermined the effective realization of our shared objectives.”

The Obama Administration completed its Burma policy review in September 2009 and announced its intention to pursue a dual-track approach that integrates both sanctions and engagement to achieve results in Burma. President Barack Obama appointed Mitchell to the Special Representative for Burma position in mid-April 2011.

In his hearing statement, Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated that upon arrival in Burma “the President’s envoy will need to assess the implications of recent developments in Burma, including the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, the controversial 2010 elections, and the formation of a government led by a former top regime general and now President, Thein Sein.”

Following Mitchell’s appointment, Aung San Suu Kyi commented that, “As a special envoy, he probably sees that his duty is to try to bring about the democratization of Burma as smoothly and quickly as possible. So look upon him as a friend.”

From 1997 to 2001, Mitchell served as the special assistant for Asian and Pacific affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, during which he received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Exceptional Public Service. He was the principal author of the Department of Defense 1998 East Asia Strategy Report. Mitchell has also worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the China Post (Taiwan), and as assistant to the senior foreign policy adviser to Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Mitchell received an M.A. in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1991, and a B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1986.

The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee nomination hearing video is available here, and Mitchell’s accompanying statement is accessible here.

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