Dr. Carol Lee Hamrin

Senior Associate

Chinese affairs consultant, Research Professor at George Mason University, and Senior Associate with the Global China Center in Charlottesville, Virginia.

With a Ph.D. in Chinese and comparative world history, and twenty-five years as a senior Research Specialist at the Department of State, Carol Hamrin provides a long-term perspective on the remarkable transformation underway in China. Her research focuses on how the dynamics that drive market reforms spill over into social and cultural arenas, with implications for China’s ambitions as a great power and for the many aspects of U.S.-China relations, from societal ties to government to business.

Dr. Hamrin advises nonprofit organizations supporting social services and training projects for the development of China’s Third Sector, works on human rights and religious rights policy issues, and writes on culture and religion.

Hamrin earned the Secretary of State’s Career Achievement Award in 2000, and received the Center for Public Justice Leadership Award for outstanding public service in 2003. She has taught in Washington, D.C.-area graduate schools and has published widely.

Select Publications

Books and Reports

• God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-State Tensions (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press, 2004), co-edited with Jason Kindopp.
• Advancing Freedom of Religion and Belief in a Global China: A New Framework (St. Davids, Pa: Council on Faith & International Affairs, Report of the China Task Force, 2004).
• Soul Searching: Chinese Intellectuals on Faith and Society (Pasadena, Ca.: China Horizon, 1998), 2nd ed., co-edited with Samuel Ling et. al.
• Decision Making in Deng’s China: Perspective from Insiders (Armonk, N.Y.: East Gate Books, M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1995), co-edited with Suisheng Zhao.
• China and the Challenge of the Future: Changing Political Patterns (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, Inc. 1990).

Articles and Book Chapters

• “Engaging China’s New Society,” the CSIS Freeman Chair in China Studies, Freeman Report NewsletterVol. 4:5 (May 2006). http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/frv06v05.pdf
• “China’s Social Capital Deficit,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Institute for International Economics (IIE) joint project on China: the Balance Sheet, April 2006. http://www.chinabalancesheet.org/Papers.html
• “Chinese Professionals: New Identities and New Style Politics,” in Claudia Derichs and Thomas Heberer, eds. The Power of Ideas: Intellectual Input and Political Change in East and Southeast Asia (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2006).
• Hamrin, Carol Lee, “Deepening Sino-American Ties at the Grass Roots,” Foreign Service Journal, Vol. 85:5 (May 2005), pp. 39-46.
• “CFIA Task Force Report: A New Framework for Promoting Religious Freedom in China,” The [Brandywine] Review of Faith & International Affairs Vol.3: No.1 (Spring 2005). http://www.globalengage.org/edu/cfia/tbr_archive/spring05-chamrin.pdf
• “The Growing Rights Consciousness in China,” ChinaSource Journal (Spring 2005).
• “Advancing Religious Freedom in a Global Era: Prospects and Prescriptions,” in Kindopp and Hamrin, eds. God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-State Tensions (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press, 2004).
• “The Floating Island: Change of Paradigm on the Taiwan Question,” Journal of Contemporary China 13:39 (May 2004).
• “To Serve the People: NGOs and the Development of Civil Society in China,” Roundtable of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, March 24, 2003 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.G. Printing Office, 2003). http://www.cecc.gov/pages/roundtables/032403/index.php
• Hamrin, Carol Lee, “China’s Invisible Social Revolution and Sino-American Cultural Relations,” in Christopher Marsh and June Teufel Dreyer, U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-first Century: Policies, Prospects, and Possibilities (Oxford, U.K.: Lexington Books, imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2003), pp. 27-42.
• “The Global Chinese: Rethinking Kingdom-building and Nation-building,” in Mission Frontiers…Moving Past Cultural Christianity 25-6 (November-December 2003), 10-11. http://www.missionfrontiers.org/2003/06/contents.htm
• “Social Dynamics and New Generation Politics,” in David M. Finkelstein and Maryanne Kivlehan, eds. Chinese Leadership in the Twenty-first Century: The Rise of the Fourth Generation (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2002).

works by Dr. Carol Lee Hamrin

China's Protestants: a Mustard Seed for Moral Renewal?

The number of religious believers in China continues to grow almost exponentially, far outpacing population growth.(1) Meanwhile, vague and unchanging official estimates, which since 1994 have reported “over 100 million faithful” in the country, reflect the government’s tendency to mask...

Identity Politics: the Case of Tibet

Demonstrators targeting the Olympics torch relay to protest human rights abuses in China have met with vigorous and emotional counter-demonstrations by Chinese living and studying overseas, angered by attacks on this symbol of the Beijing Olympics. A new tide of...

Greater China's Great Transformation

Let me start by explaining the choice of terms used in my title: “Greater China” refers to the Chinese diaspora of traders, emigrants and political exiles from the coastal provinces – including many Christians --who played a very important role...

China’s Identity Crisis

This entry from my journal twenty years ago, when I was visiting the new Special Economic Zones, reflected on China’s long struggle to reconcile its traditional culture and society with the requirements of modernity coming from the West.

The Moral Reconstruction of Societies

Beneath the surface, however, the Gospel seeds of salvation, personal character, and public ethics planted in those earlier decades continued to germinate. Over time, they began to bear fruit, a process that continues today.

History and Idolatry

Fifteen years ago, I had an exchange with a Chinese friend that has remained etched in my mind: Luo: I’m not a Christian, but I would open up China to as many missionaries as possible. China needs more Christians. Carol:...

A Voice from the Past with a Word to the Wise (Part II)

Tang Guo’an was a remarkable man, a Christian involved in business, diplomacy and education in the early 1900s. Yet there is no full biographical record of his many contributions to China’s early modernization. During his lifetime, he was overshadowed by...

A Voice from the Past with a Word to the Wise (Part I)

In August 1905, “Tong Kuo-Ann, a Chinese Christian” who was a member of the Imperial Railway Commission was featured with his photo on the cover of the World Missionary Review published in New York City. A businessman in the railroad...

Meandering

The long history of the Chinese civilization resembles the winding course of a great and turbulent river, testing the limits of human reason to understand. In my journey to comprehend changes underway and foresee China’s future, I am like a...

Review of Recent Publications on China

For too long, it has been hard to find balanced analyses of China’s prospects. The media tend to adopt a zero sum approach and exaggerate either China’s growing strengths as an inevitable “threat” to U.S. interests, or its weaknesses and impending failure, sometimes implicitly seeing this as favorable to the U.S.

Faith-Based Organizations: Invisible Partners in Developing Chinese Society

In my presentation today, I will highlight the growing importance of faith-based NPOs (nonprofits) in China, both domestic and foreign, in shaping a rapidly changing society.

More Than Martyrs

While doing justice to those who still suffer for their faith, Americans need to ensure that our activism supports, rather than hinders, China’s next generation as they seek to add to their hard-won freedoms.

“Whither China?”

While working as a research specialist on China at the State Department, my colleagues and I knew that the best chance to influence the policy-makers was in the early stages of a new Administration — when they were willing briefly...

Engaging a Global Chinese Society and Culture

A Kingdom perspective could help adjust official U.S. foreign policy to better support bilateral social interaction, and inspire unofficial nongovernmental actors to develop a more fruitful engagement strategy.

A New Framework for Promoting Religious Freedom in China

Advocates for religious freedom—and perhaps especially American advocates—need a fresh approach to their engagement of countries like China that have records of egregious abuses of human rights.

Engaging China’s New Society

Washington should pursue additional ways to support and engage the thickening web of private social and cultural ties that will introduce new ideas and values, as well as institutional experience and techniques, to promote sociopolitical progress in China.

China’s Social Capital Deficit

Developing the third sector is essential for addressing the difficult challenges China now faces, and in turn could ease the transition to more democratic political institutions, increasing the chances for peaceful change as nonprofits play a stronger role in mediating between state and society.

The Legacy of Chinese Christianity and China's Identity Crisis

I would like to begin with a review of the history of God’s interaction with the Chinese people, including the centuries-long efforts to bring the Gospel to China since most Americans, even most Chinese people, are very unaware of the long legacy of Christianity in China.

New Regulations on Religion

Statement of Carol Lee Hamrin, Monday, MARCH 14, 2005 on NEW REGULATIONS ON RELIGION for the U.S. Senate - House of Representatives Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Washington, DC.

Re-Thinking Religion as Social and Cultural Capital

We need to understand, and gear our policy to, the PRC’S outdated and unpopular framework for religious policy, and the internal debate about it since 1987-88 attempt to draft a religion law.