Julian Gewirtz and Zongyuan (Zoe) Liu Join Columbia SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics as Senior Research Scholars on China

Julian Gewirtz, an author, historian, and former diplomat who served in senior policymaking positions in the White House and State Department, and Zongyuan (Zoe) Liu, an author and leading expert on the Chinese economy and financial policies, will join Columbia SIPA as senior research scholars, with an affiliation at the Institute of Global Politics (IGP). Both Gewirtz and Liu are returning to Columbia as former post-doctoral China and the World Fellows, having worked closely with Thomas J. Christensen, the James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations and director of the China and the World Program.

Gewirtz will join Columbia full-time, and will lead research pertaining to China, its regional and global impact, US-China relations, and US foreign policy. Liu will hold the position part-time, while continuing her work at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where she serves as the Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies. Her research will focus on China’s role in the international economic and financial system.

As scholars at SIPA and IGP, Gewirtz and Liu will be organizing and hosting events and student and faculty roundtables. Both scholars will be working with faculty and practitioners to help ensure that academic work can best inform public policy choices.

“I am delighted to have such powerful thinkers back at Columbia,” said Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo. “Their research excellence and depth of expertise on China policy will provide crucial opportunities for learning and intellectual exchange among our students and the wider community here at SIPA.”

“We are very excited about welcoming Julian and Zoe to the strong team studying China and global stability at SIPA,” said Christensen. “I am looking forward to welcoming them back to SIPA and to working with them, through the China and the World Program and IGP.”

Gewirtz served in senior policymaking roles during the Biden administration, including as Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs at the White House National Security Council, Senior Advisor to the Principal Deputy National Security Advisor, and Deputy China Coordinator at the State Department. He is the author of three books: most recently, a history of China after Mao, Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s, which was named a best book of the year by Foreign Affairs and BBC History, as well as a history of Chinese economic reform, Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China, and a collection of poems, Your Face My Flag. Previously, he was Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Special Advisor for International Affairs at the US Department of Energy, and lecturer in history at Harvard University and Columbia University.

“There has never been a greater need than now for a rigorous understanding of China’s domestic and foreign policies—or greater urgency to chart a path forward for U.S. strategy,” said Gewirtz.

Liu brings expertise in international political economy with a speciality in East Asia, specifically China and Japan, and the Middle East. Her work focuses on global financial markets, sovereign wealth funds, industrial policies, and the geoeconomics of energy transition, and East Asia-Middle East relations. Her books—Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System? and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions—examine how China leverages economic tools to achieve geopolitical goals.

Before joining CFR, Liu was an assistant professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, DC, where she taught courses on the global economy, economic statecraft, and Chinese foreign policy.

“I will be focusing on issues like China and the emergence of an alternative financial system, China’s economic and financial reform and its implications for China’s role in the world and US-China competition, China’s evolving approach of financing industrial policies and economic security, and how China implements its strategic plans for AI Plus scenarios, among other things,” Liu said.