How to Deal With a Googling China

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 31, 2010) – The University of Kentucky Asia Center will host Douglas Grob, senior staff member of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, to speak at the Asia Center Spring 2010 Speaker Series. 

Grob’s presentation, titled “The Development of the Rule of Law in China in the Information Age,” begins at 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 31, in 110 White Hall Classroom Building. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Grob is the co-chairman’s senior staff member for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) a commission created by Congress in October 2001 with the legislative mandate to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China.

The commission is made up of nine senators, nine House of Representatives members and five presidentially-appointed senior administration officials who provide an annual report to the president and Congress.

The CECC has been closely monitoring China’s regulation of the Internet, holding a March 24 hearing titled “Google and Internet Control in China: A Nexus Between Human Rights and Trade?” The commission also maintains a database of political prisoners in China and tracks court cases of figures such as writer Liu Xiaobo and environmental activist Tan Zuoren.

Grob was staff director of the CECC during the 110th Congress (2007-2009) before serving in his current position. Fluent in Mandarin, Grob was an ITT International Fellow at Peking University (1985-1986) and a Ford Foundation IPFP Fellow at Peking University School of Law (2000-2002), during which time he conducted extensive field research on grassroots legal reform at the local-level in China, working with lawyers and legal scholars at Chinese law schools and research institutes.

Grob developed courses on Chinese legal reform, comparative law and administrative law as a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland and is a 2005 recipient of the University of Maryland Award for Excellence in Teaching. Grob also has prior professional experience in international finance and trade. He holds a doctorate in political science from Stanford University, and bachelor's and master's degrees in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania.

For more information on Grob's lecture, contact the UK Asia Center at (859) 257-7858 or visit www.uky.edu/centers/asia/.