Dr. David M. Lampton is Professor Emeritus of China Studies and Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He specializes in American Defense and Foreign Policy, Developing Nations, Domestic Influences on Foreign Policy, Energy and Security, Nuclear Power, Strategic and Security Issues, U.S. Congress and Foreign Policy, U.S. Presidency and Foreign Policy with a regional focus on China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. His research has been published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Political Science Review, The China Quarterly, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many other popular and academic sources in the western world and in Chinese-speaking societies. He is the author of various books including, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (University of California Press, 2008) and Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping (University of California Press, 2014). He is the co-author of Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia (University of California Press, 2020).
He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. He has an honorary doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Far Eastern Studies, is an Honorary Senior Fellow of the American Studies Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was the inaugural winner of the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholar’s Scalapino Prize in July 2010, and is a Gilman Scholar at Johns Hopkins.
He consults with government, business, and foundations, and is on the board of several non-governmental and educational organizations, including the Executive Committee of the National Committee on United States-China Relations and Colorado College’s Board of Trustees. In January 2015, Dr. Lampton was named the most influential China watcher by the Institute of International Relations at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing.