No other country in history has so rapidly transformed its economy from being among the world’s poorest and most isolated to one of the world’s largest economies, at the heart of the global supply chain, and a leading source of international investment capital. For the last two decades, China’s sovereign funds have played a significant role in China’s economy, mitigating financial crises and tempering exogenous shocks. In this talk, Dr. Zongyuan Zoe Liu, the Maurice R. Greenberg Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, will discuss how sovereign funds have supported China’s industrial policies by financing the state’s procurement of strategic overseas assets, bankrolling Chinese enterprises’ mergers and acquisitions abroad, and sponsoring the development of indigenous Chinese technology startups. As Liu makes clear, sovereign funds are not just for oil exporters. The Communist Party of China is a leader in both foreign exchange reserves investment and economic statecraft, using state capital to encourage domestic economic activity and create spheres of influence worldwide.
Zongyuan Zoe Liu is Maurice R. Greenberg Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She researches issues in the areas of international political economy, global financial markets, and energy security in East Asia and the Middle East. Dr. Liu is the author of Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System? (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions (Harvard University Press, 2023). She is also a columnist at Foreign Policy. Dr. Liu received her PhD in international relations from Johns Hopkins University and she is also a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder.
Dr. Liu's visit to the Athenaeum is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC.
