Tim Stratford is Chairman Emeritus at AmCham China and Managing Partner in Covington & Burling LLP’s Beijing office and a member of the International Trade, Corporate and Government Affairs Practice Groups. Mr. Stratford’s practice is focused on advising international clients doing business in China and assisting Chinese companies seeking to expand their businesses globally. As a former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative, Mr. Stratford is the most senior former U.S. trade official working as a member of the U.S. business community in China. Except for the five years he spent in Washington, D.C. in government service (2005-2010), Mr. Stratford has lived and worked continuously in the greater China region since 1982.

While at USTR, Mr. Stratford was responsible for developing and implementing U.S. trade policy toward mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and Mongolia. He worked closely with other senior U.S. and Chinese officials from numerous government departments and agencies to address problems encountered by companies engaged in bilateral trade and investment and co-chaired a number of important bilateral working groups and dialogues established under the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade and the U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue.

Prior to serving at USTR, Mr. Stratford was General Counsel for General Motors’ China operations, where he was a member of GM’s senior management team in China and oversaw the company’s legal and trade policy work. Mr. Stratford also served previously as Minister-Counselor for Commercial Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and as Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Brigham Young University, and is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese.

John Larkin founded Larkin Trade International in June 2005 and has since grown the company into one of the leading providers of trade compliance consulting in China and the Asia Pacific region. Prior to founding LTI, John served as the Director for Export Compliance for Veeco Compound Semiconductor, a company that provides compound semiconductor manufacturing equipment for use in the production of light emitting diodes, radio frequency emitters, and solar cells. In this position, John utilized his knowledge of Asian markets and export controls to assist Veeco in addressing its trade issues relating to Asia and other areas of the world, including developing a market strategy in line with export compliance policies, providing guidance on logistics and regulatory issues, and serving as a primary liaison with U.S. and foreign government officials.

From 2002-2004, John served at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing as the Export Control Attaché and as a Commercial Officer. As the Export Control Attaché John was the Bureau of Industry and Security representative in China serving as the U.S. Government expert on dual-use export controls. In that role, John traveled extensively throughout China conducting site visits at Chinese companies and meeting with provincial Chinese Government officials. John was a primary U.S. Government representative in negotiating a bilateral export control agreement that was concluded in 2004. The Secretary of Commerce awarded John a Gold Medal for his role in these negotiations. As a Commercial Officer, John provided counseling and assistance to U.S. companies on a broad range of trade issues and served clients in various industry sectors, including aerospace, machine tools, nuclear, and IT/Telecom. John authored reports for the Country Commercial Guide for the machine tool and security equipment sectors, among others, as well as program reports on export controls and standards.

From 1995-2001, John was a Special Agent, first with the U.S. Customs Service in Los Angeles, then with the Dallas Field Office of the Bureau of Industry and Security. As a Special Agent, John conducted administrative and criminal investigations related to U.S. Government trade laws and regulations, including valuation, intellectual properties rights, antidumping, and export controls. From this experience, John became well versed in U.S. and foreign trade laws and regulations. In 2001, the Secretary of Commerce awarded John a Silver Medal for the successful completion of a complex and international investigation.

John is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (B.A. 1989, M.S. 1989) and a veteran of the United States Marine Corps. He speaks, reads, and writes Mandarin Chinese.

Ken Nichol is an ECWG Co-Chair, and the Director, International Trade Compliance for Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, headquartered in Savannah, Georgia U.S.A. Gulfstream is a manufacturer of large and mid-cabin business jets, and maintains a large global footprint of Sales and Product Support facilities, parts stocking locations and rapid deployment maintenance teams. As the Director, International Trade Compliance, Ken is responsible for ensuring the compliant movement of aircraft, parts, technical data and people across international borders in support of Gulfstream’s expansive global Production, Sales and Customer support business.

Dr. Ding Wei is Senior Director, Standards Strategy and Policy, Oracle China. He is working on technical standard setting, standards strategy planning and policy affairs in the field of Information and Communication Technology Industry for about two decades, where he builds strong knowledge and strategic vision in the interactions among cooperation and competition within ICT industry..

Dr. Ding is an invited expert member in the Cloud Computing Advisory Committee, China Institute of Electronics; Advisor to the Code of Conduct policy setting for Consortia Standardization, Standardization Administration of China; Member of Standardization Advisory Committee, Beijing Municipal government; Chair of Telco Cloud and Internet WG, United States Information Technology Office; Co-Chair of Information Technology Industry Forum, American Chamber of China.

Before joining Oracle, he worked in the Department of Technical Standards and Policy in Intel and Sun Microsystems, respectively. In the years before going to private company, Ding Wei was Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University and Lecturer in Dept. of E-commerce, Nanjing University.

Dan Wang is technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, a Beijing-based economics research firm. He covers China's technological progress—with a focus on semiconductors—and the broader US-China tech war. He previously worked in Silicon Valley and studied philosophy at the University of Rochester.

In this session, he will cover US regulatory actions against Chinese firms over the last two years and how they will affect China's technological progress going forward.