Is China the Next Mexico?

"Is China the Next Mexico?"
Lessons from the One-Party Model

Speaker: Jorge Guajardo, former Mexico ambassador to China

Moderator: Susan Shirk, 21st Century China Program Chair

Date: Thursday, Jan. 16, 2014
Time: 4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Location: UC San Diego, Institute of the Americas,
Malamud Room at the Weaver Center
Open to: Public

As the Chinese Communist Party nears the 70-year mark, what can it learn from the experience of the world’s longest-ruling party, Mexico’s PRI? Will China’s leadership be able to overcome the problems of corruption, income inequality, a growing distrust of government and an increasingly vocal citizenry in order to stay in power? Jorge Guajardo, Mexico’s Ambassador to Beijing from 2007 to 2013, will discuss the parallels and differences he observes between his country in the 1980s and 90s and China today, and how studying the last decades of Mexico’s PRI rule might serve to understand the future of the Chinese Communist Party.

Guajardo serves as Senior Director at McLarty Associates, where he provides strategic counsel and expertise on Latin America and China. He was Consul General of Mexico to the U.S. in Austin, Texas, and a Mexican Congressional candidate in 2003. Ambassador Guajardo also brings several years of private sector experience working in the Washington, D.C. offices of public relations firms Hill and Knowlton, and later Burson-Marsteller.

A reception will be held following the talk.

Note: Guajardo's public keynote address is a part of a larger two-day conference called "Growth, Trade, Investment and the Future of Manufacturing in China, Mexico and the U.S." This conference is being held at UC San Diego on Thursday, Jan. 16 and the Tec de Monterrey campus in Tijuana, Mexico on Friday, Jan. 17. Click here for Agenda and Speaker Biographies.

If you are interested in attending the conference, please contact Lisa Lee for more information.