About the Speaker

Professor David Shambaugh is an internationally recognized authority and award-winning author on contemporary China and the international relations of Asia. He 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, and Distinguished Visiting Fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. From 1996-2016 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), 1987-1996, where he also served as Editor of The China Quarterly. He has served on the Board of Directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Advisory Board of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), East-West Center Fellowship Board, is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and member of its Board of Studies, is a participant in the Aspen Strategy Group, and other public policy and scholarly organizations.

As an author, Professor Shambaugh has published 35 books, including most recently Breaking the Engagement: How China Won & Lost America (2025); China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now (2021); Where Great Powers Meet: America & China in Southeast Asia (2021); and China & the World (2020). His China’s Future was selected by The Economist first on the list of “Best Books of the Year” (2016), and his China Goes Global: The Partial Power (2013) was also 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 The China Reader: Rising Power (2016); Tangled Titans: The United States and China (2012, selected by Choice as a “Best Academic Book of the Year”); China’s Communist Party: Atrophy & Adaptation (2008); and International Relations of Asia (2008, 2014, 2022); Power Shift: China & Asia’s New Dynamics (2005); and Modernizing China’s Military (2002). He has also authored numerous reports, scholarly articles and chapters, newspaper op-eds, and 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.