David Shambaugh is a member of the Board of Advisors at the National Bureau of Asian Research.
He is an internationally recognized authority and award-winning author on contemporary China and the international relations of Asia.
He currently 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. From 1996-2015 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 (1991-1996). 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), and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Asia-Pacific Council, and other public policy and scholarly organizations.
He has been selected for numerous awards and grants, including as a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Senior Scholar by the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and a Senior Fulbright Scholar (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences). He has received research grants from the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, German Marshall Fund, British Academy, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and has been a visiting scholar or professor at universities in Australia, China, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Russia, Singapore, and Taiwan. An active public intellectual and frequent commentator in the international media, he serves on numerous editorial boards, and has been a consultant to governments, research institutions, foundations, universities, corporations, banks, and investment funds. He is also a member of the National Bureau of Asian Research’s Board of Advisors.
As an author, Professor Shambaugh has published more than 30 books, including most recently 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 more than 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. He is reasonably fluent in Chinese, and has some French, German, and Spanish.