Sun Zhe Headshot

Sun Zhe

Visiting Senior Research Scholar of International and Public Affairs


Personal Details

Focus areas: Chinese government and foreign policy, US-China relations, and theories on democracy and human rights

Sun Zhe is a visiting senior research scholar and co-director of the China Initiative at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is the founding director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing and has previously taught at Fudan University and Ramapo College of New Jersey. He is a graduate of Fudan University and has a Ph.D in Political Science from Columbia University. 

Sun Zhe is the author and editor of more than twenty books on comparative politics and U.S.-China relations, including New Thinking on Human Rights (1992), The Politics of Dictatorship (1995), Influencing the Future: the Institutional Transformation and the Decision Making Process of the U.S. Congress (2001), The Studies of U.S. Congress Series (2002, 2003), U.S. Congress and China: Cases and Analyses (2003), Rise and Expansion: American Domestic Politics and US-China Relations (2004), The Remaking of the National People’s Congress in China, 1979-2000 (2004), American Studies in China: 1979-2006 (2007), and Tsinghua Review of US-China Relations (2009-2015). 

Sun Zhe served as a senior consultant to the US-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue, a senior policy adviser to the Office of Taiwan Affairs of the State Council. He is a board member of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs and the US-China Peoples' Friendship Association, also serving as an independent director of CitiGroup (China) Ltd. as well as MGM (China) Ltd.

In The Media

Contributors include Andrew Nathan and Sun Zhe.

Feb 14 2022
Foreign Affairs