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

"Chinese are famous for taking the long view of history," writes the Miller Center's Brantly Womack, "and when it comes to leadership succession, they take a long view of the future."
Brantly Womack China-US Focus
"Xi Jinping has started his second term by announcing a new era in Chinese politics, and evidently part of the new era is to leave open the question of successors," says University of Virginia political scientist Brantly Womack. "No one on the new Politburo is young enough to meet the age requirement for successor," Womack notes. "Does this mean that Xi plans to break precedent and take a third term himself?"
Brantly Womack NPR
Are threatening statements from Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump changing the dynamic in the standoff between the United States and North Korea? The Miller Center's Brantly Womack offers his assessment.
The last twenty years have been the most interesting time of the ASEAN-China relationship, but one composed of two very different decades.
Brantly Womack China US Focus
As North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pursues increasingly powerful atomic weaponry and more sophisticated delivery systems, is he creating security for his regime or pushing the US to act?
Tom van der Voort Miller Center
China’s foreign minister recently likened the U.S. and North Korea to two speeding trains hurtling toward each other, an analogy that would seem to place China in the role of helpless bystander. And indeed, while tensions have risen, Beijing has been frustrated by its declining influence over the Korean Peninsula. China “has a grandstand seat but no control,” said University of Virginia China scholar Brantly Womack.
Brantly Womack Washington Post