April 2018

Joshua Eisenman is an Assistant Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Texas and a Senior Fellow for China studies at the American Foreign Policy Council. His research focuses on Chinese politics and foreign relations with the United States and the developing world, and Africa in particular.

Eisenman’s forthcoming book, Red China’s Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune (Columbia University Press, 2018), applies economic and political theories to explain the political economy of rural China during the Mao era. Working with Eric Heginbotham, he co-edited China Steps Out: Beijing’s Major Power Engagement with the Developing World (Routledge, 2018), which analyses China’s strategies in various regions of the developing world and evaluates their effectiveness. Eisenman’s second book, China and Africa: A Century of Engagement (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), co-authored with David H. Shinn, was named one of the top three books about Africa by Foreign Affairs. He is also co-editor of China and the Developing World: Beijing’s Strategy for the 21st Century (M.E. Sharpe, 2007).

Eisenman’s work has appeared in numerous publications including Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, Current History, and Journal of Contemporary China. He has been a visiting faculty member at Fudan University (2017), Peking University (2016), and NYU-Shanghai (2011-2012), and served as a policy analyst on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and as a fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and at the New America Foundation.