Elizabeth Economy

About

Elizabeth Economy is the Hargrove Senior Fellow and co-chair of the Program on the US, China, and the World at the Hoover Institution. From 2021 to 2023, she served as the senior advisor for China in the Department of Commerce. Economy was previously at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she served as the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and director for Asia Studies for over a decade.

Economy is an acclaimed author and expert on Chinese domestic and foreign policy. Her most recent book is The World According to China (Polity, 2022). She is also the author of The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (Oxford University Press, 2018), which was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize for foreign affairs books, and By All Means Necessary: How China’s Resource Quest Is Changing the World (Oxford University Press, 2014) with Michael Levi. Her book The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future (Cornell University Press, 2004; 2nd edition, 2010) was named one of the top fifty sustainability books by the University of Cambridge, won the 2005 International Convention on Asia Scholars Award for the best social sciences book published on Asia, and was listed as one of the top ten books of 2004 by The Globalist, as well as one of the best business books of 2010 by Booz Allen Hamilton’s Strategy+Business magazine. She also coedited China Joins the World: Progress and Prospects (Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1999) with Michel Oksenberg and The Internationalization of Environmental Protection (Cambridge University Press, 1997) with Miranda Schreurs. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages.

She has published articles in foreign policy and scholarly journals including Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, and Foreign Policy, and op-eds in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among other news outlets. Economy is a frequent guest on nationally broadcast television and radio programs, has testified before Congress on numerous occasions, and regularly consults for US government agencies and companies. In June 2018, Economy was named one of the “10 Names That Matter on China Policy” by Politico Magazine.

Economy serves on the board of managers of Swarthmore College, as well as on the boards of the National Committee on US-China Relations and the National Endowment for Democracy. She is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and the Council on Foreign Relations. At the World Economic Forum, she served as a member and then vice chair of the Global Agenda Council on the Future of China (2008–14) and a member of the Global Agenda Council on the United States (2014–16). She has taught undergraduate- and graduate-level courses at Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and the University of Washington's Jackson School of International Studies.

Economy received her BA with honors from Swarthmore College, her AM from Stanford University, and her PhD from the University of Michigan. In 2008, she received an honorary doctor of law degree from Vermont Law School.