Joseph Nye's contributions have played a pivotal role in shaping the U.S.-China relationship, influencing critical discussions on global power dynamics. His insights will leave a lasting impact for years to come.
Joseph Nye’s byline has been a regular feature of China-US Focus for many years now. His last contribution, Will We See More Nuclear Proliferation?, published on May 2, exemplifies his signature style, succinct and penetrating:
”Eight decades have passed since the energy contained within an atom was used in warfare. Yet rather than suffering nuclear Armageddon, the world has achieved a surprising nuclear stability – so far.”
Work With China, Don’t Contain It; Information Warfare Versus Soft Power; Between Complacency and Hysteria are just a few more of the 88 archived articles he wrote for Focus since 2012.
I first became aware of this journal precisely because it touted some of the top names in the U.S.-China-watching field, including Joseph Nye, Ezra Vogel, David Shambaugh and Stephen Roach… as well as counterparts such as Jia Qingguo, Cui Tiankai, Wang Jisi and Yan Xuetong among China’s top U.S.-watchers.
Nye wrote concisely and with insight; his contributions will be missed. At the time of his passing on May 6, 2025, he was still contributing commentary to this and other platforms designed to nurture and sustain U.S.-China dialogue. It’s a conversation he has been a central part of both as an academic and as a government official over the years.
I first met Joseph Nye at Harvard when I started my tenure as a Nieman Fellow on campus in 1997. We found ourselves in attendance at nearly all of the China-related events in the year that followed, many of which he had helped organize. It was a red banner moment in U.S.-China exchange on multiple levels; we saw Chinese President Jiang Zemin speak in Saunders Hall and heard from dissidents Wang Dang and Wei Jingsheng in smaller venues later in the same year. Numerous Clinton administration officials came through and CIA analysts such as Robert Suettinger spoke on campus.
Both Ezra Vogel and his close colleague Joe Nye were generous in including me in the panoply of dinners and receptions that followed. These ranged from a penthouse cocktail party thrown featuring Hong Kong-based donor Nina Kong to a formal Harvard Faculty Club sit down dinner with influential China intelligence chief Xiong Guangkai.
There were Chinese opposition journalists, Taiwan independence activists, and political prisoners freshly released from Chinese prison crossing the same campus paths as Beijing state security officials and PLA military brass.
It’s the kind of thing a major university is uniquely suited to do, to welcome diverse voices and players from radically different sides, the likes of which one would not be breaking bread with were it not for the inclusive collegial spirit of campus.
Given a background in both journalism and academia, I was fascinated by the diverse cast of characters passing through campus that year, delighted to meet and chat with key players on both sides of the U.S.-China divide.
Neil Rudinstine, the president of Harvard at the time, told me he was a big booster for U.S.-China relations, but as he humbly confessed, he could just sit back and let Professor Vogel and Professor Nye do all the heavy lifting.
Vogel and Nye had an interesting relationship, more collegial than competitive, each recognizing the unique abilities of the other. Vogel was very much the traditional area studies scholar, with excellent language skills and a commanding grasp of theoretical scholarship, while also having an acute awareness of the hard political realities of contemporary foreign policy.
Vogel, in particular, was so good at trying to see things as others saw them that he was sometimes accused of being on the other side, variously pegged as a shameless agent for Japan, or China, depending on which of his many books you had just read. In fact, Vogel, worked closely with the U.S. government and at one point took a leave from Harvard during the Clinton administration to work in U.S. intelligence—under the auspices of Joseph Nye, of all people.
Joe Nye and I didn’t always see eye to eye, and disagreed openly on a number of issues during China-related events. Unlike Ezra Vogel who courted journalists and had a high tolerance for opposing views, Nye could be prickly about criticism of institutions he was vested in. He winced at my suggestion that Harvard was good at taking money from not entirely savory sources. And he was unduly harsh in criticizing people he didn’t agree with. When I quoted fellow East Asianist, Chalmers Johnson, a scholar critical of U.S. imperialism in Asia, he snapped: “Next time you see your friend Chal Johnson, tell him I think he’s a flake.”
Nye’s approach could be abrasive at times, but he was a gifted institution builder, not a diplomat. He was good at bringing in money and governmental support, expanding the scope of Kennedy School from its earliest days. So dedicated he was to the institution that became his legacy, and so personally involved in the process, that he had a small memorial built for his mother on the grounds of the Kennedy school, not far from the plaque which notes that Thailand’s long-reigning Bhumiphol Adulyadej was born in Cambridge at Mt. Auburn hospital.
When I asked him why he hadn’t made more of an effort to learn languages, especially Chinese, he did not deny or deflect so much as redirect the question. “Why do I need to spend my time on that? When I want to go to languages, I go to Ezra. He’s the best. He’s fluent in Chinese, fluent in Japanese.”
The unexpected response shed light on a long and close relationship. Nye admired his colleague’s linguistic skills and didn’t see the need to compete on those terms. There was a division of labor at work, and while most scholars would argue the importance of self-mastery when it comes to advanced language study, the reality of the realm Nye oft inhabited—that of Washington DC politicians, university administrators and intelligence czars—is that many decision-makers don’t speak foreign languages well, perhaps not at all, but have access to some of the best experts in the business.
Nye accentuated the importance of teamwork in his basically bureaucratic approach and made no apologies for it.
When I asked him about allegations of the U.S. and China using electronic means to spy on one another, he described the state of play in simple, vivid terms: “let’s just say there are a lot of electrons going back and forth in both directions.”
I’d like to think that Joseph Nye and I had established a baseline of mutual respect after a year of each questioning the other, and I know I learned a lot from him. I liked his concept of soft power, although one could quibble that he was far from the first to note the importance of culture in East-West exchange—among many other examples, the 1959 Nixon-Khrushchev kitchen debate comes to mind—but Nye admirably pursued the topic in a systematic way and fine-tuned the concept.
Despite some differences in temperament and political views, we were very much on the same page when it comes to the primacy of culture and soft power, especially in a world bristling with arms and hard power.
As we reflect on his life, Joseph Nye’s legacy is not only found in the ideas he championed, but in the rooms he helped convene and the exchanges he made possible. He never stopped believing in the power of engagement. That commitment defined much of his career, and helped shape the landscape of U.S.-China dialogue as we know it. For those of us who knew him, debated with him, or simply read him, Nye’s voice was one that demanded attention…not always comfortable, but never indifferent. His absence will be deeply felt.