Scott Kennedy

Scott Kennedy is senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). A leading authority on the Chinese economy, his ongoing areas of focus include China’s high-tech drive, U.S.-China relations, and global economic governance. Kennedy has been traveling to China for 38 years. His major publications include The Power of Innovation: The Strategic Value of China’s High-Tech Drive (CSIS, March 2026); U.S.-China Scholarly Recoupling: Advancing Mutual Understanding in an Era of Intense Rivalry (CSIS, March 2024); (with Wang Jisi) Breaking the Ice: The Role of Scholarly Exchange in Stabilizing U.S.-China Relations (CSIS, 2023); China’s Uneven High-Tech Drive: Implications for the United States (CSIS, 2020); Global Governance and China: The Dragon’s Learning Curve (Routledge, 2018); The Fat Tech Dragon: Benchmarking China’s Innovation Drive (CSIS, 2017); and The Business of Lobbying in China (Harvard University Press, 2005). His commentaries and articles have appeared the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, China Quarterly, and China Journal. Kennedy is co-organizer of the track-2 U.S.-China Global Economic Order (GEO) Dialogue, and he hosts the China Field Notes podcast, which features voices from on the ground in China.