China Town Hall

About the Event

The CHINA Town Hall, organized by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (NCUSCR), is a nationwide 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.
The 2026 CHINA Town Hall program will take place with two veteran senior diplomats discussing 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.
US-China Education Trust (USCET) and the Elliott School's Sigur Center for Asian Studies are proud to partner with NCUSCR to bring this important event to our local community in Washington, D.C. This year’s local discussion will feature Susan Thornton, senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School and former acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State, as our distinguished guest speaker.
Join us on Tuesday, April 7th for this important conversation. Doors will open at 6:15 pm for light refreshments and mingling. At 6:30 pm, we will join the virtual NCUSCR livestream program to discuss the current state of U.S.-China relations. Afterwards, local attendees will join a conversation with Susan Thornton for a discussion on the outlook for U.S.-China relations.

About the Speakers

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 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 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.

Susan A. Thornton is a retired senior U.S. diplomat with almost 30 years of experience with the U.S. State Department in Eurasia and East Asia. She is currently a senior fellow and research scholar at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale University Law School; director of the Forum on Asia-Pacific Security at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy; and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Until July 2018, Thornton was acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State and led East Asia policymaking amid crises with North Korea, escalating trade tensions with China, and a fast-changing international environment. In previous State Department roles, she worked on U.S. policy toward China, Korea, and the former Soviet Union and served in leadership positions at U.S. embassies in Central Asia, Russia, the Caucasus, and China.

Thornton received her master’s in international relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and her bachelor’s from Bowdoin College in economics and Russian. She serves on several non-profit boards and speaks Mandarin and Russian.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Sigur Center for Asian Studies at GW