experts
Evan A. Feigenbaum
Vice President for Studies, Acting Director, Carnegie China

about


Evan A. Feigenbaum is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees its work in Washington, Beijing, New Delhi, and Singapore on a dynamic region encompassing both East Asia and South Asia. He served twice as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and advised two Secretaries of State and a former Treasury Secretary on Asia. He was also the 2019-20 James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, where he is now a practitioner senior fellow. Initially an academic with a PhD in Chinese politics from Stanford University, Feigenbaum’s career has spanned government service, think tanks, the private sector, and three major regions of Asia.

From 2001 to 2009, he served at the U.S. State Department as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia (2007–2009), deputy assistant secretary of state for Central Asia (2006–2007), member of the policy planning staff with principal responsibility for East Asia and the Pacific (2001–2006), and an adviser on China to Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, with whom he worked closely in the development of the U.S.-China senior dialogue.

During the intensive final phase of the U.S.-India civil nuclear initiative from July to October 2008, he co-chaired the coordinating team charged with moving the initiative through the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors and the Nuclear Suppliers Group and then to Congress, where it became the U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act. He negotiated agreements with the governments of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and also has extensive policy experience with North and South Korea, Japan, and Australia, and is an advisory board member of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue. He received three individual and two group superior honor awards from the State Department.

Following government service, Feigenbaum worked in the private and nonprofit sectors: He was vice chairman of the Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago, and the co-founder of MacroPolo, its digital venture on the Chinese economy; head of the Asia practice at the markets consultancy Eurasia Group, a global political risk consulting firm; and senior fellow for East, Central, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before government service, he worked at Harvard University (1997–2001) as lecturer on government in the faculty of arts and sciences and as executive director of the Asia-Pacific Security Initiative and program chair of the Chinese Security Studies Program in the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He taught at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (1994–1995) as lecturer of national security affairs and was a consultant on China to the RAND Corporation (1993–1994).

He is the author of three books and monographs, including The United States in the New Asia (CFR, 2009, co-author) and China’s Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear to the Information Age (Stanford University Press, 2003), which was selected by Foreign Affairs as a best book of 2003 on the Asia-Pacific, as well as numerous articles and essays.


education
PhD, AM, Political Science, Stanford University, AB, History, University of Michigan  
languages
Chinese, English, French

All work from Evan A. Feigenbaum

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163 Results
event
Forecasting the Future for U.S.-Taiwan Economic Cooperation
September 4, 2024

New administrations in Taiwan and the United States offer an opportunity to broaden economic and technological cooperation.

  • +1
In The Media
in the media
Cold War In Asia? For Business It’s An Everyone-Makes-The-Rules Rumble

Asia is filled with large, capable, self-interested powers. And increasingly, without looking to either Washington or Beijing, these players are setting diverse and sometimes competing rules on the market and regulatory matters that affect business.

· September 1, 2024
Forbes
In The Media
in the media
Evan Feigenbaum on how China uses tech to transform traditional industries to outcompete

A discussion on how China will speed up indigenizing frontier technology given the pressure from the U.S., while increasingly using technology to transform traditional industries to lock in dominance.

· August 12, 2024
CNBC
In The Media
in the media
Risks to Taiwan Strait stability on the rise from Beijing, Taipei and Washington: Evan Feigenbaum

A discussion on the rising risks around the Taiwan Strait.

· August 11, 2024
CNBC
In The Media
in the media
How China Wants High-Tech To Power Its Economy To The Top

China has a four-pronged tech strategy to challenge multinationals, bolster Chinese competitiveness, and better position Chinese firms to set engineering standards across a wide swath of emerging and frontier economies.

· August 2, 2024
Forbes
event
Can the United States and Europe Coordinate Counter-Coercion With Taiwan?
March 13, 2024

Most debates about Chinese coercion of Taiwan focus on invasion, and how an international coalition including the United States and Europe might respond. But China’s coercive toolkit is vast and includes both kinetic and non-kinetic measures that fall well short of these dire scenarios.

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event
Making Sense of U.S. Policy Amid North Korea’s Strategic Shift
March 5, 2024

With Russia using North Korean ballistic missiles in Ukraine, Kim Jong Un denouncing his father’s and grandfather’s stance on Korean unification, and borders beginning to reopen to the world after over three years of strict closure, North Korea appears poised for big changes in 2024.

event
A Report Card for Korean Digital Leadership
February 29, 2024

When tech journalists, CEOs, and politicians think of tech policy, they usually look to Washington, Brussels, or Beijing (and, more recently, New Delhi). But Seoul is attempting to craft its own innovative answers to thorny questions of digital policy.

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research
Korea's Path to Digital Leadership: How Seoul Can Lead on Standards and Standardization

This volume digs into South Korea’s experiences with digital standards and standardization and draws attention to Korea’s distinctive digital policy. It then compares Korea’s experiences to those of the United States and other Asian players, notably Malaysia and Japan—grading all four countries in key areas.

event
Reimagining Continental Asia: Launching a New Carnegie Initiative
October 4, 2023

Evan Feigenbaum, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Temur Umarov, Nicole Grajewski, and Asel Doolotkeldieva focus on strategic dynamics in continental Asia and how regional players—not the United States or the transatlantic West—are driving both diplomacy and regional integration.