Lecture: China, the US and Europe in the Era of Xi and Trump

Historian Rana Mitter OBE FBA, the S.T. Lee Professor of U.S.-Asia Relations at The Harvard Kennedy School, will address ‘China, the US and Europe in the era of Xi and Trump’ for Britain’s Academy of Social Science’s 2026 Annual Lecture.

The technological competition between China, the US and EU will shape global economics and security for decades to come, yet China’s fraught historical relationship with the west over more than a century and a half will also affect its geopolitical choices.  This lecture will assess how the world will change, and how Europe might react, in an era when the leaders of  the US and China seek to change global order in new and unpredictable directions. 

Mitter, a Fellow of the British Academy, has written several books, including 2013’s Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, which won the 2014 RUSI/Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature, and was named a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and Economist. His most recent book is 2020’s China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism. In 2020, the UK Historical Association awarded him its Medlicott Medal for Service to History.

The lecture will be followed by a president’s reception attended by Mitter, academy President Will Hutton, and other attendees. Doors open at 5.30 p.m., with the lecture starting promptly at 6pm.