2026 CHINA Town Hall at DePaul University

CHINA Town Hall (CTH), a program that provides a snapshot of the current U.S.-China relationship and examines how that relationship reverberates at the local level – in our towns, states, and nation – connects people around the country with U.S. policymakers and thought leaders on China.

2026 CHINA Town Hall at DePaul University will feature two talks. Please join our discussion about the current US-China relations in person or via Zoom. The door will open at 5 PM. RSVP is required.

5:30-6:30 (CDT) PM National Webinar.

Two veteran senior diplomats will discuss the current state and future trajectory of the U.S.-China relationship: Stephen Biegun, former U.S. deputy secretary of state, and Sarah Beran, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and former senior director for China and Taiwan affairs at the White House National Security Council.

Bio of the National Webinar Speakers:

Sarah Beran: Partner, Macro Advisory Partners; Former Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Sarah Beran is a partner at Macro Advisory Partners, joining the firm in 2025 following a distinguished career in the U.S. Foreign Service, most recently as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
From 2022 to 2024, Ms. Beran served as senior director for China and Taiwan Affairs at the White House National Security Council. Her portfolio encompassed technology export controls, investment screening, trade policy, counternarcotics, Russia sanctions and Taiwan contingency planning. She led strategic preparations for multiple heads-of-state summits, negotiated the reopening of senior diplomatic channels with Beijing, and helped forge the first U.S.-China understanding on AI safety in the context of nuclear command and control.
Ms. Beran also served as then-U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s deputy executive secretary for the Indo-Pacific, led the office responsible for U.S. engagement in APEC, and served as former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s director of the office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs. She was posted overseas in Beijing, Islamabad, Jerusalem, and Quito. Her previous domestic assignments include office director for economic policy in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, special assistant to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Lebanon desk officer.
Ms. Beran speaks Mandarin and Spanish. She joined the Foreign Service in 2002 and graduated from Claremont McKenna College in 1999. She is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

Stephen Biegun: Former Deputy Secretary of State. Stephen Biegun has more than three decades of international affairs experience in government and the private sector, including high-level government service with the Department of State, the White House, and the United States Congress. In 2021, Mr. Biegun concluded his most recent government service as the Deputy Secretary of State, to which he was confirmed by the Senate with a strong bipartisan vote of 90-3. In addition to his government service, Mr. Biegun has also served as a corporate vice president with Ford Motor Company and The Boeing Company.
Mr. Biegun began his career as a foreign policy specialist with the United States Congress, with a focus on Russia, the former Soviet Union, and Europe, ultimately rising to a number of senior-level positions, including chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as the national security advisor to the Senate Majority Leader. He spent two years as the Executive Secretary of the White House National Security Council, serving as an advisor and deputy to the National Security Advisor. In the early 1990s, Mr. Biegun led a Moscow-based technical assistance program working closely with Russia’s first post-Soviet government.
Mr. Biegun has volunteered as a board member for several international, national, and local non-profit organizations and currently serves on the boards of the National Endowment for Democracy and the German Marshall Fund. He graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Russian language and political science.

Audience member questions are the foundation of CHINA Town Hall, so we need to hear from you! Please use this form to submit your questions and share the form with the constituents of the local town hall at DePaul University. If a question is selected from DePaul University, you will be invited to join the national broadcast via Zoom and ask the question live. If you have any questions regarding the submission process, please contact [email protected].

6:40-7:40 PM (CDT) Local Discussion with Dr. Graham Chamness

Topic: Ritual Replication: The Orchid Pavilion and the Limitations of Chinese Soft Power

Discussions of China’s global “soft power” often assume that something called “Chinese culture” can be transmitted as a stable but adaptable cultural form. This talk uses that idea as a departure point to examine how Chinese culture has historically been reproduced within China itself. It focuses on one of the most famous works of traditional China: the Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Poems by the fourth-century calligrapher Wang Xizhi. For more than a millennium, scholars have copied the preface, reenacted the gathering it describes, and celebrated the text as a powerful vision of cultural continuity—and Chinese-speaking students around the world still memorize and copy the preface today. The Orchid Pavilion tradition thus represents a distinctive model of cultural authority grounded in the replication and reenactment of classical texts, especially through the medium of the Chinese script. Yet while no one would try to understand present-day Italy by studying Dante, discussions of China—both in Chinese-speaking nations and abroad—often treat classical texts as though they still define Chinese culture today. By examining the poems of the Orchid Pavilion gathering and the long history of copying the preface, this talk suggests that Chinese culture has often been constructed through ritual acts of replicating and imagining a shared past. Seen in this light, the Orchid Pavilion gathering offers a historical perspective on the flexibility of Chinese culture and the limits of classical texts as vessels of global cultural influence.

Bio of Dr. Graham Chamness :

Dr. Graham Chamness is a professional lecturer at DePaul University. He received his PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, and before that, his MA in Chinese and BA in Classics from the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on the intersection of literature, religion, the environment, and migration in premodern China. His current book project examines how new forms of writing about the natural world, especially landscape poetry, were shaped by the large-scale dislocation of elites from what is today north to south China in the fourth century. Before joining the Religious Studies department at DePaul, he served as a visiting assistant professor at Kalamazoo College, where he taught Chinese language and content courses. Between his time at Kalamazoo and joining DePaul, he served as senior content manager at MacroPolo, the US-China think tank of the Paulson Institute in Chicago. Forthcoming publications include a chapter on landscape poetry and the southern environment during China’s Southern Dynasties period, and one notable work in progress is a complete translation of the Master Who Embraces Simplicity (Baopuzi) by the famous fourth-century alchemist Ge Hong.

Co-sponsors:
DePaul Chinese Studies Program

DePaul Global Asian Studies Program

DePaul Department of Political Science

National Committee on US-China Relations

Info: Two veteran senior diplomats (Sarah Beran and Stephen Biegun) will discuss the current state and future trajectory of the U.S.-China relationship: Stephen Biegun, former U.S. deputy secretary of state, and Sarah Beran, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and former senior director for China and Taiwan affairs at the White House National Security Council.

Info: Dr. Graham Chamness will guide the local discussion and lead a talk entitled “Ritual Replication: The Orchid Pavilion and the Limitations of Chinese Soft Power.”

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