Matt Ferchen
LAC Senior Fellow Matt Ferchen’s research focuses on China’s efforts to promote and govern the relationship between economic development on the one hand and stability and security on the other. It is also about the related challenges and contradictions China faces both at home and abroad. Having studied, worked and lived in China for nearly two decades, his research interests extend from the governance of China’s domestic informal economy to China’s economic statecraft and economic influence in regions such as Southeast Asia and Latin America to the implications of growing U.S.-China rivalry for Europe.
Since 2019, Matt has been a lecturer at the Leiden University Institute of Area Studies, teaching courses on China and the International Political Economy. Previously, Matt was a professor in the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University from 2008-2017 and a scholar at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy from 2011-2019. From 2020-21 he was the Head of Global China Research at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) and during the 2023-24 academic year he was a Senior Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center.
Matt has a Master’s in China and Latin American Studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a PhD in comparative politics from Cornell University.
Research Interests
- China’s domestic and international informal economy
- China’s economic statecraft and economic influence
- Comparative economic security policies in Europe, Asia and the US
- China’s relations with Latin America and Southeast Asia
- Transatlantic relations and China
PROJECTS
Indo-Pacific Strategies (2021-2023)
Global Perspectives on the Belt and Road Initiative (2019-2020)
