David Wertime is Head of Global Growth and Partnerships at Duco, an online marketplace connecting high-level consultants in international business and geopolitical risk with private clients. He was previously a ChinaFile Senior Editor and Strategic Consultant Fellow with the Center on U.S.-China Relations.

He spent four years as Senior Editor for China at Foreign Policy magazine. He joined Foreign Policy after co-founding Tea Leaf Nation, an English-language website that analyzed Chinese media, acquired September 2013 by Foreign Policy’s parent company. Wertime’s writing has appeared in the Washington Post, The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and other well-known outlets. He has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and lectured at venues including Harvard Law School, Yale School of Management, and the State Department’s Fulbright program. He is a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Truman National Security Fellow, and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Before founding Tea Leaf Nation, Wertime practiced law in New York and Hong Kong. He first encountered China as a Peace Corps Volunteer, serving in Fuling, China from 2001 to 2003.

Wertime is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School. He currently lives in San Francisco.

Last Updated: November 13, 2018

Viewpoint

11.22.17

The Accomplice in Chief

David Wertime
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump declared victory following his 12-day Asia trip. On the campaign trail, Trump had repeatedly promised to stop making nice with his country’s adversaries; now, thanks to his efforts, he proclaimed, “America is...

Conversation

07.14.17

Liu Xiaobo, 1955-2017

Perry Link, Thomas Kellogg & more
When news this morning reached us that Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo had died, we invited all past contributors to the ChinaFile Conversation to reflect on his life and on his death. Liu died, still in state-custody, eight years into his 11-...

Conversation

02.10.17

Did Xi Just Outmaneuver Trump?

M. Taylor Fravel, Isaac Stone Fish & more
On the evening of February 9, U.S. President Donald Trump had what the White House described in a terse readout as a “lengthy” and “cordial” telephone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping. That alone is newsworthy, as the...

Media

01.19.17

The U.S. Media’s Unfortunate Obsession with One Beijing Rag

David Wertime
On January 11, during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, U.S. Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson raised eyebrows in Washington when he said, “We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that first the...

Viewpoint

12.09.16

I Think That Chinese Official Really Liked Me!

David Wertime & James Palmer
“Friendship” is everywhere in China, at least when it comes to dealing with foreigners. International societies are friendship associations. The stores once accessible only to foreign currency holders were called Friendship Stores. Provincial cities...

Media

09.14.16

The Chinese Democratic Experiment that Never Was

David Wertime
Protesters in southern China are up in arms. They feel that Beijing’s promises that they’d be able to vote for their own local leaders have been honored in the breach. They’re outraged at the show of force in the face of peaceful protest, and...

Conversation

07.20.16

How Should the Republican Party Approach China Policy?

Peter Navarro, Patrick Chovanec & more
On Tuesday, delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, chose Donald J. Trump as their nominee for President of the United States. We asked a range of contributors how the Republican Party should approach China policy.

Conversation

06.30.16

Where Is China’s Internet Headed?

David Schlesinger, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
Lu Wei, the often combative Chinese official known as China’s “Internet Czar,” will step down, and is to be replaced by a former deputy of Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The personnel change comes after a period of mounting restrictions on China’s...

Media

05.20.16

The Chinese Trolls Who Pump Out 488 Million Fake Social Media Posts

David Wertime
They are the most hated group in Chinese cyberspace. They are, to hear their ideological opponents tell it, “fiercely ignorant,” keen to “insert themselves in everything,” and preen as if they were “spokesmen for the country.” Westerners bemoan...

Conversation

04.06.16

China in the Panama Papers

Andrew J. Nathan, Bill Bishop & more
The overseas wealth of several relatives of senior Chinese leaders has come to light in an International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) report, part of the analysis by a group of media outlets of more than 11 million documents leaked...

Media

04.05.16

Chinese Censors Rush to Make ‘Panama Papers’ Disappear

David Wertime
On April 3, the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit International Committee of Investigative Journalists dropped what struck many as a bombshell: news that a leaked trove of 11.5 million previously secret files from Panama-based law firm Mossack...

Media

12.30.15

After Deadly Chinese Landslide, Word Games Begin

David Wertime
On December 20, a tidal wave of red dirt and construction waste descended on Guangming New District, part of the Chinese southern megacity of Shenzhen, burying whole buildings and sending residents scrambling in fright. Those facts, captured in...

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Tea Leaf Nation
11.02.12

Out of 30,006 votes cast, 71.7% support abrogating the one-child policy, and only 28.3% want to keep it. The poll was conducted after a study by the China Development Research Foundation emerged, recommending an abolition of the current one-child policy by 2015 to allow every couple to have two children. 

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09.27.12

It’s a digital disaster. With a Chinese travel crunch looming, China’s online ticketing system is quickly turning into a boondoggle of historic proportions.

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09.06.12

First Lady Michelle Obama knew she was speaking to the American electorate when she took the stage yesterday at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte, North Carolina. But she may not have known the size–or, it turns out, the enthusiasm–of her Chinese audience.

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Tea Leaf Nation
09.05.12

I’ve already been in the U.S. for a long time. I regret that choice. We’ve been [fooled] by Western media the whole time, making us think that the U.S. is a modernized country. Harboring hopes of studying American modern science in order to serve my motherland, I moved heaven and earth in order to make it over to this “superpower.” But the result...

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Tea Leaf Nation
08.06.12

As the Chinese Internet hurtles headlong into an uncertain future, the country’s legal system struggles to catch up. Pressed for time, the government’s reaction may be to fashion the legal equivalent of a blunt axe, rather than a finely crafted scalpel, against lawsuits filed by private citizens involving censorship on the Internet. The possible...

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Tea Leaf Nation
06.14.12

How can a little girl be a “prostitute?” Many in China are asking this question after a set of government officials in Lueyang, Shaanxi province, were caught having sex with a minor but found guilty of the lesser crime of “patronizing an underage prostitute” (嫖宿幼女罪) rather than statutory

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Tea Leaf Nation
06.08.12

Contrary to previous understandings, posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored. Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collective action by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content...

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Tea Leaf Nation
05.22.12

Ms. Wu, once among the richest women in China, was sentenced to death in January by a provincial court for illegally accumulating over RMB380 million, or about US$60 million, through a combination of loansharking and Ponzi schemes directed at (mostly wealthy) individuals and families. Wu then enjoyed a tidal wave of citizen and netizen discontent...

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Tea Leaf Nation
05.22.12

It’s one tragedy after another. After Mianyang, Sichuan suffered in the horrible earthquake of 2008, millions of RMB were donated to rebuild a local school. Now, that school has suffered not from a quake, but from greed. With over 16,000 re-posts since its appearance, its ruined husk is Sina Weibo’s most viral image of May 21, 2012 according to...

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