Ex-ambassador to teach about conflict

A former US diplomat will be training Chinese students in Beijing in post-conflict resolution as part of a program that pairs US technical experts with students in China and teaches them best practices in a number of fields.

Thomas Miller, three-time US ambassador to Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cyprus, and his wife Bonnie Miller, a social worker and educator, will be in China this week to teach students at the Beijing Foreign Studies University theory and skill-building.

They will teach courses that draw from examples from Greece's current economic crisis, the war in Bosnia Herzegovina, and the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia.

"The more people you expose to alternative ways of resolving disputes, the better the world will be, and that's not a nationality thing - that's clearly around the world. There's enough conflicts in the world right now," Miller told China Daily.

"I'd rather focus my time on the next generation who are students now and perhaps give them some tools and equip them in a way where they can approach conflict situations in a way that you don't always have to go to war. You can resolve things," he said.

The assignment is part of a volunteer program administered by the International Executive Service Corps (IESC) in China. The IESC, of which Miller is president and CEO, is a Washington-based non-profit organization founded by David Rockefeller that works to strengthen private enterprises around the world.

It's partnering with AARP (the American Association for Retired Persons), the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, and the China Association for International Exchange of Personnel. The program is expanding to provide professional and practical training to Chinese students in higher education, the IESC said.

"It's not just sitting up there and lecturing, there's a lot of stuff we'll be doing. We Americans don't have a monopoly on how to do it right, so I see this as a more interactive type of encounter than just sitting up there like a traditional professor lecturing," Miller said.

China has been expanding its peacekeeping efforts abroad, with President Xi Jinping recently announcing at the UN General Assembly that it would expand its aid on peacekeeping operations.

amyhe@chinadailyusa.com