On December 9, 2019, Mike Mochizuki from GeorgeWashington University visited SIAS and gave a lecture titled “A Rules-basedMaritime Order: Implications for US-China-Japan Strategic Interactions”.Professor Mochizuki holds the Elliot School's endowed chair in Japan-USRelations at George Washington University. He was formerly a senior fellow atthe Brookings Institution as well as co-director of the Center for Asia-PacificPolicy at RAND. His areas of expertise include Japanese politics and foreignpolicy, US-Japan relations, and East Asian security.

Professor Mochizuki talked about the development of the maritime order based on the UnitedNations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) andits implications for current China-US competition. In regards to US-China-Japaninteractions, he emphasized that certain “common strategic interests” coulddrive China-Japan relations, and that Japan could serve as a stabilizer whenChina-US relations enter a period of turmoil. Academics from the ShanghaiAcademy of Social Sciences (SASS) joined SIAS research staff at the meeting.They shared their views with Professor Mochizuki on hot-spots issues concerningChina-Japan relations.