Cheng Li is Director and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center. Dr. Li is also a director of the National Committee on US-China Relations. He is the author/editor of numerous books, including China’s Emerging Middle Class: Beyond Economic Transformation (2010), The Road to Zhongnanhai: High-Level Leadership Groups on the Eve of the 18th Party Congress (2012, in Chinese), China’s Political Development: Chinese and American Perspectives (2014), Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era: Reassessing Collective Leadership (2016), and The Power of Ideas: The Rising Influence of Thinkers and Think Tanks in China (forthcoming). He is the principal editor of the Thornton Center Chinese Thinkers Series published by the Brookings Institution Press.
Dr. Li has advised a wide range of U.S. government, education, research, business and not-for-profit organizations on work in China. Li grew up in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution. In 1985, he came to the United States when he later received an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of California and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Princeton University.
Dr. Li now resides in Hong Kong, where he serves as professor of political science and founding director of the Centre on Contemporary China and the World (CCCW) at the University of Hong Kong.
