Experts

Brantly Womack

Fast Facts

  • Retired C.K. Yen Chair at the Miller Center
  • Expert on China
  • Received China Friendship Award for his work with Chinese universities

 

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • Asia
  • Economic Issues
  • Trade

Brantly Womack is a faculty senior fellow at the Miller Center and professor emeritus of foreign affairs at the University of Virginia. He received his BA degree in politics and philosophy from the University of Dallas, and after a Fulbright in philosophy at the University of Munich, earned his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago. 

Womack is the author of Recentering Pacific Asia (Cambridge University Press 2023), Asymmetry and International Relationships (Cambridge University Press 2016), China Among Unequals: Asymmetric International Relationships in Asia (World Scientific Press 2010), and China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry (Cambridge University Press 2006), as well as more than 100 articles and book chapters.

His co-edited book, Rethinking the Triangle: Washington-Beijing-Taipei (World Scientific Press 2016), was the product of a series of five international conferences that began at the Miller Center. He edited China’s Rise in Historical Perspective (Rowman and Littlefield 2010), the product of a lecture series at the Miller Center, and Contemporary Chinese Politics in Historical Perspective (Cambridge 1991). In 2011, Womack received the China Friendship Award for his work with Chinese universities. He holds honorary positions at Jilin University, East China Normal University, and Zhongshan (Sun Yat-Sen) University. 

Brantly Womack News Feed

Brantly Womack believes that understanding China is the key to understanding the next era of economic and geopolitical power. And in order to look forward, we first must look back.
Brantly Womack UVA Today
Foreign affairs expert and retired C.K. Yen Chair Brantly Womack discusses the lessons of Vietnam, the country: reconciliation and recovery are possible.
Brantly Womack UVA Lifetime Learning
Professor of Foreign Affairs Brantly Womack notes that China's alignment with Iran is a new development in China’s global foreign policy. "While China is not building an alliance with Iran, it is challenging the long-standing U.S. policy of 'comprehensive strategic hostility' toward Iran."
Brantly Womack Gulan Media
Not since Hercules cleaned out the Augean stables has an incoming leader faced a messier and more difficult task than that President Trump leaves behind. And despite Hercules’s strength and cleverness, he did not get much credit for his labor. President-elect Biden faces similar prospects of hard work and little reward in his main domestic tasks, and foreign policy challenges such as Iran and China promise further distractions rather than relief. But there are low-hanging diplomatic fruits that could give the new administration an early start and gain political capital at home and abroad.
Brantly Womack The Hill
China’s space program is thus the perfect test case for current American discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of decoupling. Is it a good idea to minimize collaboration and to cut China off from high-tech inputs? Can the United States get its allies to cooperate? Can China be isolated? Can its progress be stopped?
Brantly Womack The Diplomat
How Biden can deal with ongoing tensions with China.
Brantly Womack Richmond Times-Dispatch