Cheng-Chwee Kuik is a nonresident scholar at Carnegie China, Carnegie’s East Asia-based research center on contemporary China. He is professor of international relations at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), National University of Malaysia (UKM), and concurrently a nonresident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute (FPI), School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University.

Previously he was a postdoctoral research associate at the Princeton-Harvard “China and the World” Program. Professor Kuik’s research focuses on small-state foreign and defence policies, China-ASEAN relations, big powers in the Indo-Pacific, Asian security, and international relations. His publications have appeared in such peer-reviewed journals as International Affairs, Pacific Review, Journal of Contemporary China, Chinese Journal of International Politics, and Contemporary Southeast Asia.

He is co-author with David M. Lampton and Selina Ho of Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia (2020), and co-editor with Alice Ba and Sueo Sudo of Institutionalizing East Asia: Mapping and Reconfiguring Regional Cooperation (2016). Kuik’s essay, “The Essence of Hedging” was awarded the Michael Leifer Memorial Prize by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. His current projects include: hedging in international relations, elite legitimation and foreign policy choices, and the host-country agency in connectivity cooperation.

Professor Kuik serves on the editorial boards of Contemporary Southeast Asia, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Asian Politics and Policy, International Journal of Asian Studies, and East Asian Policy. He holds an M.Litt. from the University of St. Andrews and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University.