Project Team
Co-Chairs
C. Fred Bergsten, co-chair of the China Balance Sheet project, has been director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics since its creation in 1981. He has been the most widely quoted think tank economist in the world over the eight-year period 1997–2005, was ranked in the top 50 “Who Really Move the Markets?” by Fidelity Investment’s Worth, and was cited as “one of the ten people who can change your life” in USA Today. Dr. Bergsten took the lead in writing the preface and the concluding chapter of China: The Balance Sheet, the flagship publication of the joint CSIS-Peterson Institute project.
Dr. Bergsten was assistant secretary for international affairs of the U.S. Treasury during 1977–81. He also functioned as undersecretary for monetary affairs during 1980–81, representing the United States on the G-5 deputies and in preparing G-7 summits. During 1969–71, Dr. Bergsten coordinated U.S. foreign economic policy in the White House as assistant for international economic affairs to Dr. Henry Kissinger at the National Security Council. Dr. Bergsten was chairman of the Eminent Persons Group of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum from 1993 to 1995, authoring its three reports that recommended “free and open trade in the region by 2010 and 2020” as adopted at the APEC summits in 1993 and 1994. He was also chairman of the Competitiveness Policy Council created by the Congress from 1991 through 1995.
Dr. Bergsten has authored, coauthored, or edited 36 books on international economic issues. He has received the Exceptional Service Award of the Treasury Department and the Legion d’Honneur from the Government of France, and was named an honorary fellow of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1997. Dr. Bergsten received MA, MALD, and PhD degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a BA magna cum laude and honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Central Methodist College.
John J. Hamre was elected CSIS president and chief executive officer in January 2000. Before joining CSIS, he served as U.S. deputy secretary of defense (1997–1999) and under secretary of defense (comptroller) (1993–1997). As comptroller, Dr. Hamre was the principal assistant to the secretary of defense for the preparation, presentation, and execution of the defense budget and management improvement programs.
Before serving in the Department of Defense, Dr. Hamre worked for 10 years as a professional staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. During that time, he was primarily responsible for the oversight and evaluation of procurement, research, and development programs; defense budget issues; and relations with the Senate Appropriations Committee. From 1978 to 1984, Dr. Hamre served in the Congressional Budget Office, where he became its deputy assistant director for national security and international affairs. In that position, he oversaw analysis and other support for committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Dr. Hamre received his Ph.D., with distinction, in 1978 from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. His studies focused on international politics and economics and U.S. foreign policy. He received a B.A. emphasizing political science and economics, with high distinction, from Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1972. He also studied as a Rockefeller fellow at the Harvard Divinity School.
Authors and Project Leaders
Charles Freeman holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS. Previous to CSIS, he served as managing director of the China Alliance, a collaboration of law firms that help clients devise trade, investment, and government relations strategies in the United States and China. Prior to the China Alliance, he was assistant U.S. trade representative (USTR) for China affairs, the United States’ chief China trade negotiator, and played a primary role in shaping overall trade policy with respect to China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and Mongolia. During his tenure as assistant USTR, he oversaw U.S. efforts to integrate China into the global trading architecture of the World Trade Organization. He also negotiated and solved trade problems across a wide range of issues, including intellectual property rights protection; financial and nonfinancial services; tax, industrial standards, and technology policies; and agricultural market access. His career-long experience with China and other parts of Asia spans tours of duty in government, business, and the nonprofit sectors. Prior to joining the Office of the USTR, Freeman served as international affairs counsel to Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), where he advised on trade, foreign relations, and international energy matters, with particular focus on East Asia. In addition to his time with the China Alliance, his private-sector experience includes stints as a Hong Kong–based executive with the International Herald Tribune and as a Boston-based securities lawyer and venture capitalist concentrating on developing markets in Asia and Eastern Europe. In the nonprofit world, he was based in Hong Kong as director of economic reform programs in China and Taiwan for the Asia Foundation.
Freeman received his J.D. from Boston University School of Law, where he was an editor of the Law Review and graduated with honors. He earned a B.A. from Tufts University in Asian studies, concentrating in economics, also with honors. He also studied at Fudan University in Shanghai and at the Taipei Language Institute. A second-generation “China hand,” he grew up between Asia and the United States and speaks Mandarin Chinese.
Nicholas R. Lardy is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and is co-director of the China Balance Sheet project. He wrote chapters 2 and 4 of China: The Balance Sheet, focusing on China’s domestic economy and China’s role in the international economy, respectively.
Dr. Lardy is considered one of the world’s leading experts on the Chinese economy. He came to the Peterson Institute in March 2003 from the Brookings Institution, where he had been a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program since 1995. From 1997-2000, he was also the Frederick Frank Adjunct Professor of International Trade and Finance at the Yale University School of Management. Prior to his work at Brookings, Dr. Lardy served at the University of Washington from 1983-1995, including as director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies (1991–1995) and as chair of the China Program (1984–1989), among other posts. He was an assistant and associate professor of economics at Yale University from 1975–1983.
Dr. Lardy’s publications include Prospects for a U.S.-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement (with Daniel H. Rosen) (Peterson Institute: 2004); Integrating China into the Global Economy (Brookings Press, 2002); and China’s Unfinished Economic Revolution (Brookings Press, 1998). Dr. Lardy serves on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the National Committee on United States–China Relations; is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; and is a member of the editorial boards of The China Quarterly, Journal of Asian Business, China Review, and China Economic Review. He received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1968 and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1975, both in economics.
Ben Heineman helped conceive of the China Balance Sheet project by calling attention to the urgent need for objective, fact-based analysis of the future of U.S.-China relations, and he has served as an intellectual advisor to the CSIS-Peterson Insitute team throughout the process.
Mr. Heineman is a graduate of Harvard College (1965), Oxford University (1967), and Yale Law School (1971). A former Rhodes scholar, editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal, and law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, he practiced law in Washington, D.C., before serving at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from 1977 to 1980, ending his tenure there as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation. Mr. Heineman was then managing partner of the Washington office of Sidley & Austin, focusing on Supreme Court and test case litigation. He is the author of books on British race relations and the American presidency. In 1987, Mr. Heineman became senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary of the General Electric Company (GE) located in Fairfield, Connecticut. In 2004, he was named GE's senior vice president for law and public affairs and served in that position until his retirement at the end of 2005. Mr. Heineman is currently senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and distinguished senior fellow at Harvard Law School's Program on the Legal Profession. He is also senior counsel to the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering Hale & Dorr. Mr. Heineman is a member of the Board of Managers and Overseers of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; a member of the Board of Transparency International-USA; and a trustee of the National Constitutional Center. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Adam Posen, project advisor on the China Balance Sheet project, is deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, where he has been a senior fellow since 1997. His research focuses on macroeconomic policy and performance, European and Japanese political economy, and central banking issues. The Institute will publish his new book, Reform and Growth in a Rich Country: Germany, partially supported by a major grant from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, in early 2008. As deputy director, he leads the Institute’s recruitment of senior researchers and its outreach initiatives to press and the general public, coordinates with partner research institutions and Institute supporters, and oversees administration and finance for the Peterson Institute’s $9 million annual budget and 55 person staff.
A widely cited expert on monetary policy, he has been a visiting scholar at central banks worldwide, including on multiple occasions at the Federal Reserve Board, the European Central Bank, and the Deutsche Bundesbank. In 2006 he was on sabbatical leave from the Peterson Institute as a Houblon-Norman Senior Fellow at the Bank of England. He has also been a consultant to several US government agencies (including the Departments of State and Treasury and the Council of Economic Advisors), the European Commission, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, and to the International Monetary Fund on a variety of economic and foreign policy issues. He is a member of the Panel of Economic Advisers to the Congressional Budget Office for 2007-09.
Dr. Posen is the author of the book Restoring Japan’s Economic Growth (Institute for International Economics, 1998; Japanese translation, 1999), the coauthor with Ben Bernanke et al. of Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience (Princeton University Press, 1999), and the editor and part-author of three collected volumes: The Euro at Five: Ready for a Global Role? (Institute for International Economics, 2005); The Future of Monetary Policy (Blackwell, forthcoming); and The Japanese Financial Crisis and its Parallels with U.S. Experience (Institute for International Economics, 2000; Japanese Translation, 2001). He has also published more than 30 papers on monetary and fiscal policy in leading economics journals, academic and central bank conference volumes. He cofounded and chairs the editorial board of the refereed journal International Finance.
He is a frequent contributor to the opinion page of the Financial Times, and has also published in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Die Zeit, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, among many other leading newspapers. He is the associate editor of The International Economy magazine, for which he writes a regular column “The Monetary Realist.” He also writes a monthly column for the German national paper Welt am Sonntag. Dr. Posen has been a consultant on fixed-income and foreign exchange markets to some of the leading global financial companies and private investment firms.
From 1994 to 1997, he was an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he advised senior management on monetary strategies, the G-7 economic outlook, and European monetary unification. In 1993 & 1994, he was Okun Memorial Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and won the Amex Bank Review Awards Silver Medal for his dissertation research on central bank independence. In 1992 & 1993, he was resident in Germany as a Bosch Foundation Fellow. He received his Ph.D. and his A.B. (Phi Beta Kappa) from Harvard University, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. Dr. Posen is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a research associate of the Center for the Japanese Economy and Business of Columbia University, a fellow of the CESifo Research Network, and has been a Public Policy Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin (2001).
Project Coordinator
Carl Rubinstein is a project coordinator for the China Balance Sheet project and a research assistant with the Freeman Chair in China Studies. Before joining CSIS, he worked with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, working with the Asia Team to strengthen democratic institutions in East Asia. Mr. Rubinstein also worked in the Office of Senator Joe Biden and the office of Congressman Adam Smith. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese. Mr. Rubinstein holds a B.A. in Political Science/International Relations from Carleton College with a Language Certificate in Mandarin Chinese. Additionally, Mr. Rubinstein studied at the Harbin Institute of Technology in Harbin, China, and at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, China.
Research Associates
Melissa Murphy is a fellow with the CSIS Freeman Chair in China Studies, where she works on issues related to China’s domestic political and socioeconomic developments. Prior to joining CSIS, she was a China specialist with the international law firm Dewey Ballantine, focusing on U.S.-China economic and trade relations. Before attending graduate school, Ms. Murphy spent seven years working in Hong Kong and Okinawa for the U.S. government, where she monitored developments in East Asia. She is the author of Decoding Chinese Politics: Intellectual Debates and Why They Matter; co-author of China-Europe Relations: Implications and Policy Responses for the United States and Meeting the Challenges and Opportunities of China’s Rise; and a contributing author to the China Balance Sheet project publications. Ms. Murphy is from the United Kingdom and received an M.A. and B.A. with honors from Cambridge University. She graduated from Harvard University with an M.A. in East Asian studies, concentrating on China’s political and economic transformation.
Giwon Jeong is currently a research assistant for Dr. Lardy at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Ms. Jeong received her M.A. in Asian studies from the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, where she focused on Asian economics and international relations of East Asia. She received her B.A. in Chinese language and literature from South Korea’s Ewha Women’s University, graduating magna cum laude. Previously, she has worked as a research assistant for Robert Shapiro, former under secretary of commerce, on his upcoming book and has served as a freelance Korean translator for Radio Free Asia. She is a native speaker of Korean and fluent in Mandarin, which she studied at Peking University in Beijing, China.
Xiaoqing Lu is a research associate with the CSIS Freeman Chair in China Studies. She graduated with an M.A. in sustainable international development from Brandeis University in 2005. She previously interned with the Kenan Institute Washington Center and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars during her graduate studies. Ms. Lu is from China and worked as a program assistant for the American Bar Association-Asia Law Initiative in Beijing. She received her B.A. in international economics and trade from Beijing International Studies University in 2002.