Li Cheng

Li Cheng is a professor of political science and the founding director of the Centre on Contemporary China and the World at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). His research areas include the transformation of political leaders, the Chinese middle class, technological development in China and Sino-US relations. Li is the author and editor of 17 books, including Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping U.S.-China Engagement, The Power of Ideas: The Rising Influence of Thinkers and Think Tanks in China, and Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era. Prior to joining HKU, Li served as director and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center, where he remains a nonresident senior fellow. Li is also a director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, a distinguished fellow of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at University of Toronto, a nonresident fellow at Yale University’s Paul Tsai China Center, a scholar in residence at Asia Society Hong Kong, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.