US - China Relations

WILLIAM NORRIS, Associate Professor, George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University

Dr. William Norris is currently an associate professor of Chinese foreign and security policy at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University where he teaches graduate-level courses in Chinese domestic politics, East Asian security, and Chinese foreign policy. Dr. Norris has been an associate with the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C. where his work examined the potential for a conventional US-China conflict to escalate to the nuclear realm. He was also a postdoctoral research associate at the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs and a fellow in the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, a joint program created by the two universities to foster the study of China’s foreign relations. He completed his doctoral work in the Security Studies Program in the Department of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he specialized in the confluence of economics and security, focusing on the role of economics in contemporary Chinese grand strategy.

His broad research interests include East Asian security, business-government relations, Chinese foreign and security policy, and international relations theory—particularly the strategic relationship between economics and national security. His work examines the use of commercial sector actors to achieve national foreign policy objectives in the context of Chinese grand strategy. His most recent book is entitled: Chinese Economic Statecraft: Commercial Actors, Grand Strategy, and State Control (Cornell University Press 2016).

Dr. Norris has been the recipient of various fellowships and awards, including the Stanton Nuclear Security Fellowship, the Asia Foundation’s Domestic Dimension of International Affairs Grant, Bush School Faculty Excellence Award, Smith Richardson Foundation World Politics and Statecraft Fellowship, the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Scholarship, the David L. Boren National Security Education Fellowship, and the Bradley Fellowship. He was recently named a Student Success Faculty Fellow by the Center for Teaching Excellence at Texas A&M University and was selected as a fellow with the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on US-China Relations. Dr. Norris directs the Bush School’s Concentration in China Studies and serves on the Faculty Advisory Board of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs.