Michael Dalzell Swaine is an expert in China and East Asian security studies and a Senior Associate in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Prior to joining the Carnegie Endowment as co-director of the China Program in 2001, Swaine worked for 12 years at the RAND Corporation, where he was appointed as the first recipient of the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy Chair in Northeast Asian Security. Swaine is a regular contributor to the China Leadership Monitor, a journal published by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has published several books, monographs, and articles related to U.S.-China relations, East Asian international relations, the Chinese military, Taiwan, Japan, and Chinese foreign policy and grand strategy. An article in a leading Chinese foreign affairs journal identified Swaine as one of the four major scholars in the third generation of American "China watchers," along with David M. Lampton, Harry Harding, and Jonathan D. Pollack. Swaine has conducted several joint research studies with institutions and scholars based in China, Taiwan, and Japan. He coordinates the U.S.-China Crisis Management Program co-sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment and the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies . This program's annual conference brings together scholars and practitioners from China and the United States to analyze past crises and discuss how to manage potential crises in the Sino-American relationship. Swaine's 2006 book Managing Sino-American Crises: Case Studies and Analysis compiles several of the papers and analyses that arose from the 2004 conference in Beijing. A book review by Steven Goldstein published in The China Quarterly called this program "clearly one of the more ambitious joint Sino-American social science projects that has been undertaken since scholarly contacts were restored in the 1980s." Swaine also coordinates an annual Conference on People's Liberation Army Affairs, co-sponsored by the Taipei-based Center for Advanced Policy Studies, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the RAND Corporation, and the National Defense University. The 22nd annual Conference on PLA Affairs was held in Taipei, Taiwan, from October 27 to November 1, 2010, with a keynote address by Ma Ying-jeou, president of Taiwan. Before starting at RAND in 1989, Swaine worked at a private sector firm and studied as a postdoctoral fellowat the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and as a research associate at Harvard University. He studied Mandarin and Japanese at Stanford University's Inter-University Center for Chinese Language Studies in Taipei and Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo and earned a PhD and MA from Harvard University and a bachelor's degree from George Washington University.
Published works
America’s Challenge: Engaging a Rising China in the Twenty-First Century
Is a Regional Strategy Viable in Afghanistan?, with Tiffany Ng, et al., Carnegie Report
"Sino-American Crisis Management and the U.S.-Japan Alliance" in The Japan-U.S. Alliance and China-Taiwan Relations: Implications for Okinawa, Mike M. Mochizuki, ed.
"Managing Relations with the United States," in Presidential Politics in Taiwan, Steven M. Goldstein and Julian Chang, eds.
Assessing the Threat: The Chinese Military and Taiwan's Security, with Andrew Yang, Evan Medeiros, and Oriana Mastro
Managing Sino-American Crises: Case Studies and Analysis, with Zhang Tuosheng and Danielle F. S. Cohen
"Military Modernization in Taiwan," in Strategic Asia 2005-2006, Ashley J. Tellis and Michael Wills, eds.
"Simmering Fire in Asia: Averting Sino-Japanese Strategic Conflict," with Minxin Pei, Policy Brief No. 44
"U.S.-China Relations and the Implications for Okinawa" in The Okinawa Question and the U.S.-Japan Alliance, Akikazu Hashimoto, Mike M. Mochizuki, and Kurayoshi Takara, eds.
"Deterring Conflict in the Taiwan Strait," Carnegie Paper No. 46
