Senior Fellow & Senior Research Scholar
Yale University Law School,
Paul Tsai China Center
2023-
I joined the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School in 2023 as a Senior Fellow and Senior Research Scholar. My focus is on Chinese economic statecraft, economic influence, and broader issues of economic security.
Lecturer & Senior Fellow
Leiden University & LeidenAsiaCentre
2018 – 2023
From 2018-2023 I was a Senior Fellow with the LeidenAsiaCentre and a lecturer at Leiden University. At Leiden University I taught classes on Chinese International Political Economy and Asian Political Economy and supervised undergraduate and Master’s students’ theses. At the LeidenAsiaCentre, I participated in a range of projects including publications on Chinese railway infrastructure in Hungary and Serbia, European Indo-Pacific strategies, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Head of Global China Research
Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies
2020 – 2021
At the start of 2020 I joined MERICS as the Head of Global China Research, leading the foreign policy team. I co-led a project on changing US-China relations and the implications for Europe as part of a Ford Foundation grant that resulted in multiple publications. I also led a co-authored study on China’s global trade strategy for German and EU policy makers during Germany’s EU Council presidency in 2020.
Resident Scholar
Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy (now Carnegie China)
2011 – 2019
I joined Carnegie-Tsinghua in 2011, a year after the Center was founded. As a faculty member in Tsinghua’s International Relations Department, I joined a number of my colleagues as resident scholars at Carnegie-Tsinghua. I ran a program on China and the Developing World focused on publications and events linked to China’s ties to developing countries, especially in Latin America and Southeast Asia. I also led a project from 2015-2016 for the Ford Foundation on China’s impact on the linkage between economics and security in different regions in which we organized events at all of Carnegie’s global centers at the time, including in Beijing, Washington, DC, Beirut, Brussels and Moscow.
Associate Professor
Tsinghua University,
Department of International Relations
2008 –2017
After receiving my PhD at the start of 2008, I joined the International Relations Department at Tsinghua that fall, just after the Olympics. I was the first and only full-time, foreign faculty member in the Department, beginning as an Assistant Professor then promoted to Associate Professor in 2011. I taught courses on Chinese domestic and international political economy as well as on China-Latin America relations. I supervised Tsinghua IR undergraduate and graduate student theses as well as PhD students in Tsinghua’s Developing Country Studies PhD program.