Sri Lankan American Trade Expert Promotes U.S.-China Trade Relations
November 3, 2009 —
In the midst of the U.S. – China trade dispute, Sri Lankan American trade expert, Dr. Patrick Mendis from the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), defended President Barack Obama’s import tariff on Chinese tires.
Dr. Mendis was the keynote speaker at the “millionaire club” conference of 1,000 business leaders and investors in Shanghai. This conference, focusing on U.S. – China trade relations, was sponsored by the Sino Securities, the Industrial and Chemical Bank of China, and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
The United States has traditionally been a champion of free trade, he said during his keynote speech on Sino-American trade relations. The Obama administration’s decision on tariff is a temporary intervention to adjust the changing domestic labor markets, Dr. Mendis argued. “America will always uphold the principles of free trade and good relations with China,” Mendis told his optimistic audience.
This was Dr. Mendis’ second month-long lecture and book tour in China within the last five months. Sponsored by the premier Chinese Foreign Affairs University, Dr. Mendis had first been invited earlier this summer to give a series of lectures at several universities in multiple cities, as well as to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. During his tour, Dr. Mendis also served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the U.S.-China Relations Symposium under the Obama Administration at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in Guangzhou.
The Shanghai business community invited Dr. Mendis for their conference followed by a series of lectures in several major cities including Chengdu, Guilin, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Yangzhou. With his latest book, TRADE for PEACE: How the DNA of America, Freemasonry, and Providence Created a New World Order with Nobody in Charge, Dr. Mendis looks back to America’s origin to see its future. He expounded on how Chimerica (China and America) is intertwined as producer/consumer and creditor/debtor as a single nation. He also highlighted a range of emerging Sino-centric economic relations, which he calls Chipan (China and Japan), Chirusia (China and Russia), Chindia (China and India), and Chifrica (China and Africa). He further explained to his audiences how America’s founding fathers used trade as a force that unites people of differences despite their religious, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.
In Nanjing, Dr. Mendis gave lectures at the John Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese American Studies. It is the first U.S. – China academic partnership between the two countries since President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger opened diplomatic relations with China.
Dr. Mendis is a former American diplomat and a military professor in the NATO and Pacific Commands of the U.S. Armed Forces. He has traveled and worked in more than 75 countries, and later taught at the Chinese Northwestern University in Xian, the ancient capital of China.
To honor his contributions to U.S. – China relations, the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies named him an honorary consulting professor of international relations at the Center for International Security Studies. Dr. Mendis lives in the Washington, D.C. area.
Article originally published on October 30, 2009 on AsiaTribune.com.
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