Elizabeth Economy

Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University

Elizabeth Economy is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. From 2021–2023, she served as Senior Advisor (for China) to the Secretary 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.

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, a prestigious literary award for foreign affairs books. Her other books include By All Means Necessary: How China’s Resource Quest is Changing the World (Oxford University Press, 2014) with Michael Levi, and The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future (Cornell University Press, 2004; 2nd edition, 2010).

The River Runs Black was named one of the top 50 sustainability books by the University of Cambridge and won the 2005 International Convention on Asia Scholars Award for the best social sciences book published on Asia. Her books have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, and Vietnamese. 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, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, among others. Economy is a frequent guest on nationally broadcast television and radio programs, has testified before Congress on numerous occasions, and consults for U.S. government agencies and companies.

Economy serves on the board of managers of Swarthmore College and is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and Council on Foreign Relations. She received her B.A with Honors from Swarthmore College, A.M. from Stanford University, and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.