Feburary 22, 2018

David Shambaugh is an internationally recognized authority and award-winning author on contemporary China and the international relations of Asia. He has visited or lived in China every year since 1979 and has traveled extensively throughout Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

He currently is the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science & International Affairs, and the founding Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. From 1996-2015 he was also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. Professor Shambaugh was previously Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Reader in Chinese Politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), 1986-1996, where he also served as Editor of The China Quarterly (1991-1996). He has served on the Board of Directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Asia-Pacific Council, and other public policy and scholarly organizations. He has been selected for numerous awards and grants, including as a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Senior Scholar by the Phi Beta Kappa Society, a Senior Fulbright Scholar (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Distinguished Research Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and Distinguished Visitor Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. He has received research grants from the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, German Marshall Fund, British Academy, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and has been a visiting scholar or professor at universities in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Singapore, and Russia. An active public intellectual and frequent commentator in the international media, he serves on numerous editorial boards, and has been a consultant to governments, research institutions, foundations, universities, corporations, banks, and investment funds.

As an author, Professor Shambaugh has published more than 30 books, including most recently China’s Future and The China Reader: Rising Power (both 2016). China’s Future was selected by The Economist first on the list of “Best Books of the Year.” His next book (2018) will be Where Great Powers Meet: America & China in Southeast Asia. His China Goes Global: The Partial Power (2013) was selected by The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Bloomberg News as one of the “Best Books of the Year” and was runner-up for the Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Prize. Other books include Tangled Titans: The United States and China (2012, selected by CHOICE as a “Best Academic Book of the Year”); Charting China’s Future: Domestic & International Challenges (2011); China’s Communist Party: Atrophy & Adaptation (2008); and International Relations of Asia (2008, 2014); Power Shift: China & Asia’s New Dynamics (2005). He has also authored more than 20 reports, 200 scholarly articles and chapters, more than 150 newspaper op-eds, and more than 50 book reviews.

Professor Shambaugh received his B.A. in East Asian Studies from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, M.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan. He is a fluent speaker of Chinese, with some German and French.