The noted China scholar Lanxin Xiang will deliver his final lecture as Henry Alfred Kissinger Scholar in Foreign Policy and International Relations on “The Ideological Context of U.S.-China Relations” at 6:30 p.m. today in the Mumford Room of the Library of Congress’ James Madison Building.

During his address, Xiang — only the third individual to hold the prestigious chair named in honor of the former secretary of State and national security adviser — will take issue with traditional foreign policy assumptions, which cast U.S.-Sino relations in strictly “democracy versus communist despotism” tones and contend that only a democratic China will be a peaceful China.

While at the Kluge Center, Xiang has researched “The Idea of Democracy and Sino-U.S. Relations,” participated in a variety of conferences and organized the symposium “Why China Needs Democracy” this past May.

Xiang, who holds a 1990 doctorate from Johns Hopkins University’s Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, is the author of numerous articles and books on 20th century and contemporary Chinese history, as well as on the Middle Kingdom’s Cold War and post-Cold War domestic and foreign policies. Prior to arriving at the Library’s Kluge Center to serve as Kissinger Scholar, Xiang was an international history and politics professor at the Institut Universitaire des Hautes études Internationales in Geneva.

The event is free and open to the public.

— Bree Hocking