Jakub Jakóbowski

on December 6, 2023

Jakub Jakóbowski is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW) and the head of the China Department. He was formerly a Taiwan Fellow at Soochow University in Taipei and a European China Policy Fellow at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS). He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH), where he wrote his dissertation on China’s foreign economic policy towards the Global South. He gives lectures at the Warsaw University and the Warsaw School of Economics. Jakóbowski is a member of a number of international projects and associations, including Think Visegrad, China Observers in Central Europe (CHOICE), and the Horizon 2020 EU-STRAT project. From 2012 to 2015, he worked as an exports consultant for Polish small- and medium-sized enterprises in East Asia and the Commonwealth of Independent States markets.

Francesca Ghiretti

on December 6, 2023

Francesca Ghiretti was an analyst at MERICS, where her research focused on EU-China relations and economic security, the Belt and Road Initiative, and development. Before joining MERICS, she worked as a Research Fellow for Asia at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome, leading a project on the Belt and Road Initiative in Italy. Previously, she also worked as a geopolitical analyst for London-based hedge fund CQS, and as assistant to Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, former Secretary General of NATO.

Ghiretti received a Ph.D. from King’s College London, where she was a Leverhulme Fellow at the Centre for Grand Strategy. Her thesis won the King’s College London Outstanding Thesis Award. She has published extensively on the topic of economic security, including a report summarizing policy developments in selected countries titled “From Opportunity to Risk: The Changing Economic Security Policies Vis-à-Vis China” and an article on the EU’s economic security agenda titled “Construire la sécurité économique de l’Europe.”

Thomas König

on December 5, 2023

Thomas König is China Director at Deutsche Industrie- und Handelskammer (DIHK). He is co-author of the book So schafft man China and China – Mastering Business and every-day life, now in its 3rd edition.

Through his work in China at the European Chamber of Commerce in China in Beijing and the world’s largest German Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, which serves more than 1500 member companies, König has gained deep insights into German-Chinese trade and economic relations as well as all issues affecting Sino-European relations.

König holds a Bachelor’s degree from Yale University and Master’s Degrees from the London School of Economics (LSE) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He completed a bilingual semester at Peking University, gained years of experience in the think tank world as Asia Programme Coordinator at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in London and Paris, and developed training programs for Chinese UN diplomats at the United Nations Institute of Training and Research (UNITAR) in Geneva.

Alicia García Herrero

on December 4, 2023

Alicia García Herrero is the Chief Economist for Asia Pacific at French investment bank Natixis, based in Hong Kong, and she is an independent Board Member of AGEAS insurance group. García Herrero also serves as a Senior Fellow at the European think-tank BRUEGEL, a non-resident Senior Follow at the East Asian Institute (EAI) of the National University Singapore (NUS), and an Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). She is also an advisor to the Spanish government on economic affairs, a Member of the Board of the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation (CAPRI), a member of the Advisory Board of the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), and an advisor to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s research arm (HKIMR).