Scott Kennedy

Scott Kennedy is a senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese business & economics at CSIS. A leading authority on China’s economic policy and its global economic relations, specific areas of focus include industrial policy, technology innovation, business lobbying, multinational business challenges in China, global governance, and philanthropy. Kennedy has been traveling to China for almost 30 years and has interviewed thousands of officials, business executives, lawyers, nonprofit organizations, and scholars. He is the author of The Business of Lobbying in China (Harvard University Press, 2005) and (with Chris Johnson) Perfecting China Inc.: China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (CSIS, 2016) and the editor of three books, including Beyond the Middle Kingdom: Comparative Perspectives on China’s Capitalist Transformation (Stanford University Press, 2011) and The Dragon’s Learning Curve: Global Governance and China (Routledge, forthcoming). His articles have appeared in a wide array of policy, popular, and academic venues, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, China Quarterly, China Journal, and the Journal of Contemporary China.

For over 14 years, Kennedy was a professor at Indiana University (IU). From 2007 to 2014, he was director of the Research Center for Chinese Politics & Business, and he was the founding academic director of IU’s China Office. From 1993 to 1997, he worked at the Brookings Institution. Kennedy received his Ph.D. in political science from George Washington University and his M.A. in China studies from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.