Sun Zhe

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.