Photo credit to Ryan Osland/The Australian  

Oriana Skylar Mastro

Oriana Skylar Mastro is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Courtesy Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University where her research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. She is also a nonresident scholar, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was previously an assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown University. Mastro continues to serve in the United States Air Force Reserve for which she currently works at the Pentagon as Deputy Chief of Reserve China Global Strategy. For her contributions to U.S. strategy in Asia, she won the Individual Reservist of the Year Award in 2016 and 2022 (FGO). She has published widely, including in International Security, Security Studies, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly, the Economist and the New York Times. Her most recent book, Upstart: How China Became a Great Power (Oxford University Press, 2024), evaluates China’s approach to competition. Her book, The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime, (Cornell University Press, 2019), won the 2020 American Political Science Association International Security Section Best Book by an Untenured Faculty Member. She holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University. Her publications and other commentary can be found at www.orianaskylarmastro.com  

Joel Wuthnow

Dr. Joel Wuthnow is a senior research fellow in the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs within the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. He also serves as an adjunct professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. His recent books include China’s Quest for Military Supremacy (2025, with Phillip C. Saunders), Crossing the Strait: China’s Military Prepares for War with Taiwan (2022, lead editor), and The PLA Beyond Borders: Chinese Military Operations in Regional and Global Context (2021, lead editor). His work has also appeared in outlets such as Asia Policy, Asian Security, China Leadership Monitor, The China Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Joint Force Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Strategic Studies, Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Naval War College Review, The New York Times, and in edited volumes. Prior to joining NDU, Dr. Wuthnow was a China analyst at CNA, a postdoctoral fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University, and a pre-doctoral fellow at The Brookings Institution. His degrees are from Princeton University (A.B., summa cum laude, in Public and International Affairs), Oxford University (M.Phil. in Modern Chinese Studies), and Columbia University (Ph.D. in Political Science). He is proficient in Mandarin. 

Ka Zeng

Ka Zeng’s research focuses on China’s role in the global economy, in particular Chinese trade policy, China’s behavior in global economic governance, and China-related trade dispute dynamics. Dr. Zeng is the author or co-author of Trade Threats, Trade Wars (Michigan, 2004), Greening China (Michigan, 2011) and Fragmenting Globalization(Michigan, 2021). She is also the editor or co-editor of China’s Foreign Trade Policy (Routledge, 2007), China and Global Trade Governance (Routledge, 2013), Handbook on the International Political Economy of China (Edward Elgar, 2019), the Research Handbook on Trade Wars (Edward Elgar, 2022), and China and the WTO (Cambridge, 2023). She is a contributor to journals such as International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Organizations, Review of International Political Economy, World Development, Economics & Politics, Business and Politics, Journal of Experimental Political Science, Journal of World Trade, International Interactions, China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, Social Science Quarterly, Chinese Journal of International Politics, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Pacific Affairs, and China & World Economy. Dr. Zeng is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations. She is also a fellow in cohort V of the Public Intellectuals Program sponsored by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. 

Viola Zhou

Viola Zhou is a senior reporter at Rest of World covering China. She has reported on Chinese tech, business, and internet culture for more than 10 years. Viola previously covered Chinese politics and society for Vice World News, and reported for the South China Morning Post from Hong Kong. She has won multiple SABEW and SOPA Awards for her reporting on Foxconn in India and Chinese pop culture. She is based in New York City.

Zhifan Luo

Dr. Zhifan Luo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Wilson College of Leadership and Civic Engagement at McMaster University, Canada. Her research investigates the intricate interplay among digital technologies, political power, and civil society. Dr. Luo’s research has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her work has appeared in journals such as New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, China: An International Journal, Journal of Political Power, and Armed Forces & Society. She received her doctorate in sociology from the State University of New York at Albany.

Ma Tianjie

Ma Tianjie is a freelance writer and environmental activist based in Beijing. Formerly, he was Director of China Dialogue Beijing from 2015 to 2022, reporting on China’s environmental affairs for a global audience. He was also Greenpeace’s Program Director for Mainland China. He is a regular commentator on China’s environmental challenges contributing to a range of domestic and international media organizations, including CGTN, South China Morning Post and Foreign Policy. 

Kongjian Yu

Kongjian Yu received his Doctor of Design Degree at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1995 with a dissertation titled ‘Security Patterns in Landscape Planning.’ He then practiced as a landscape planner and designer for two years with the SWA Group in the US before he returned to China in 1997. Since then, he has been a professor of landscape architecture, and urban and regional planning. He founded and has been leading the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture, and the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Peking University.

For over 25 years, he has spent his academic career fighting against deteriorating urban ecologies and the environment. His pioneering research on Ecological Security Pattern (1995) and Ecological Infrastructure, Negative Planning and Sponge Cities (2003) has been adopted by the Chinese government as guiding theory for nationwide ecological protection and restoration campaigns. He is a leading member of several national expert committees, including vice president of the Society of Urban Studies. Chairman of the Beautiful China and Landscape Architecture Committee, Deputy Director of the National Sponge City Expert Committee, and Deputy Director of the National Human Settlement Committee at the Chinese Ministry of Housing and Urban and Rural Development. He is the editor and/or author of several text books authorized by the Chinese central government and ministries to train Chinese officials.

Mark W. Frazier

Mark W. Frazier (PIP I) is Professor and Chair of Politics at The New School, where he also serves as Co-Director of the India China Institute. His research interests focus on labor and social policy in China, and more recently on political conflict over urbanization, migration, and citizenship in China and India. His latest book, The Power of Place: Contentious Politics in Twentieth Century Shanghai and Bombay (Cambridge University Press, 2019), examines longterm changes in political geographies and patterns of popular protest in the two cities. He is also the author of Socialist Insecurity: Pensions and the Politics of Uneven Development in China (Cornell University Press, 2010), The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and Co-Editor of the SAGE Handbook of Contemporary China (2018). He has authored op-ed pieces and essays for The New York Times, Daedalus, and The Diplomat. Frazier has been a fellow in PIP since 2005 and was a Fulbright Research Fellow in China in 2004-05.

Before joining The New School in 2012, he held a chaired professorship in Chinese Politics at the University of Oklahoma and was the Luce Assistant Professor in the Political Economy of East Asia at Lawrence University, a liberal arts college in Wisconsin. He received his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of California, Berkeley.

Nick R. Smith

Nick R. Smith (PIP VIII) is a scholar of urban transformation and planning, and an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. His work explores the city as an institution and planning as a process of institution building. Combining the perspectives of new institutional economics, development anthropology, and urban sociology, Smith investigates how urbanization inscribes the “rules of the game” into the space of the city. Smith’s work focused on peri-urban China, where he has conducted extensive research on the development and planning of village communities. His recently published book, entitled The End of the Village: Planning the Urbanization of Rural China, investigates an epochal shift in Chinese urban policy that aims for the near-total urbanization of China’s territory and population. His current research is investigating Shekou, one of the first industrial zones to be established during China’s post-1978 reform era.

Prior to joining Barnard, he was a founding member of the Urban Studies faculty at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. At Barnard, he teaches a variety of courses in the Architecture Department and the Urban Studies Program, including Urban Elsewheres, Urbanizing China, and Key Debates in Urban Planning and Policy. Smith received his A.B. (East Asian Studies), A.M. (Architecture), and Ph.D. (Urban Planning) from Harvard University. He has also held visiting positions at Oxford University (Oxford China Centre), Chongqing University (Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning), and Renmin University (History).

Irene Wu

Irene S. Wu, Ph.D. is author of Measuring soft power in international relations (Lynne Rienner, 2024).  She is a lecturer in the Communications, Culture, and Technology Program of Georgetown University and a former fellow at the Wilson Center for international Scholars. Her other books include Forging trust communities: how technology changes politics (Johns Hopkins, 2015), and From iron fist to invisible hand: the uneven path of telecommunications reform in China (Stanford, 2009).  Her degrees are from Johns Hopkins and Harvard Universities, with additional studies at National Taiwan Normal University, University of Puerto Rico, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, China.