Andrew S. Erickson

The People’s Liberation Army: Perspectives from the United States and Japan

Date:

Friday, March 3, 2017, 12:15pm to 2:00pm

See also: Asia Center, China, Japan, Fairbank Center

Location:

S153, 1st Floor, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge

Asia Center Fellows Seminar Series

Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University

Lt. Gen. Yoshikazu Watanabe (Ret.), Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF), is a senior fellow at the Harvard Asia Center. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electronic Engineering from Tokyo University in 1978. He entered the JGSDF, serving as 28^th Infantry Regimental Commander, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Eastern Army, Director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Cooperation Office, vice president of the National Institute for Defense Study, Director of Logistics in the Department of the Ground Staff Office (GSO), 2nd Division Commanding General, Vice Chief of Staff of the GSO, and Eastern Army Commanding General. He retired from the JGSDF in 2013. Currently, he is a special adviser of Fujitsu System Integration Laboratory.

Chair:་Dr. Andrew S. Erickson is Professor of Strategy in, and a core founding member of, the U.S. Naval War College (NWC)’s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI). He helped to establish CMSI and to stand it up officially in 2006, and has subsequently played an integral role in its development. Erickson currently serves on the Naval War College Review’s Editorial Board. Since 2008 he has been an Associate in Research at Harvard University’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Erickson is also an expert contributor to the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report.་

Erickson has taught courses at NWC and Yonsei University. He advises a wide range of student research and theses at NWC, Harvard, and other institutions. In 2013 he deployed in the Pacific as a Regional Security Education Program scholar aboard USS Nimitz. He has briefed a broad array of senior policy-makers and principals; testified before the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees; and provided inputs for multifarious government programs, simulation exercises, and reports.

Erickson received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Princeton University. He is the author of the book Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Development (Jamestown Foundation, 2013) and coauthor of two other books: Gulf of Aden Anti-Piracy and China’s Maritime Commons Presence (Jamestown, 2015) and Assessing China’s Cruise Missile Ambitions (National Defense University Press, 2014).  Erickson is the editor of, and a contributor to, two volumes: Chinese Naval Shipbuilding: An Ambitious and Uncertain Course (Naval Institute Press, 2016) and Proceedings of the 47th History Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics (Univelt, 2015). He blogs at www.andrewerickson.com.