Chairman Larry M. Wortzel was reappointed to the Commission by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert on December 8, 2006 for a fourth term expiring December 31, 2008. Dr. Wortzel was unanimously elected as the Commission’s Chairman for the 2008 report cycle, and previously served as Chairman for the 2006 report cycle.
He previously served as the Director of the Asian Studies Center and Vice President for foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation. A leading authority on China, Asia, national security, and military strategy, Chairman Wortzel had a distinguished thirty-two-year career in the U.S. armed forces. His last military position was as director of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College.
Following three years in the Marine Corps, Chairman Wortzel enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1970. His first assignment with the Army Security Agency took him to Thailand, where he focused on Chinese military communications in Vietnam and Laos. Within three years, he had graduated Infantry Officer Candidate School, as well as both Airborne and Ranger schools. After serving four years as an infantry officer, he shifted to military intelligence. Wortzel traveled regularly throughout Asia while serving the U.S. Pacific Command as a political-military affairs analyst from 1978 to 1982. The following year he attended the National University of Singapore, where he studied advanced Chinese and traveled in China and Southeast Asia. He next worked for the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, developing counterintelligence programs to protect emerging defense technologies from foreign espionage. In addition, he managed programs to gather foreign intelligence for the Army Intelligence and Security Command.
From 1988 to 1990, Chairman Wortzel was Assistant Army Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in China, where he witnessed and reported on the Tiananmen Massacre. After assignments as an Army strategist and managing Army intelligence officers, he returned to China in 1995 as the Army Attaché. In December 1997, he became a faculty member of the U.S. Army War College, serving as director of the Strategic Studies Institute. He retired from the Army as a colonel.
Chairman Wortzel's books include Class in China: Stratification in a Classless Society (Greenwood Press: 1987), China's Military Modernization: International Implications (Greenwood: 1988), The Chinese Armed Forces in the 21st Century (Carlisle, PA: 1999), and Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese Military History (Greenwood: 1999). He regularly publishes articles on Asian security matters.
A graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College and the U.S. Army War College, Chairman Wortzel earned his B.A. from Columbus College, Georgia, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii. He and his wife, Christine, have two married sons and two grandchildren.