Isaac Stone Fish is the founder and CEO of Strategy Risks. Founded in 2021, Strategy Risks helps clients manage geopolitical risks, with a focus on China. Stone Fish is the author of America Second: How America’s Elites are Making China Stronger (Knopf), a book about American political and business leadership’s deep ties to China, and how this impacts the United States.

Stone Fish also serves as a contributor to CBSN, an adjunct at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, a Visiting Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a columnist on China risk at Barron’s. He is a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Truman National Security Project Fellow, and a Senior Advisor to the Korea Society. He previously served as a Senior Fellow at the Asia Society’s Center on United States-China Relations, and the German Marshall Fund, and as the Asia Editor at Foreign Policy Magazine.

A fluent Mandarin speaker and formerly a Beijing correspondent for Newsweek, Stone Fish spent seven years living in China, and has visited every province, municipality, and special administrative region. He is an experienced speaker on United States-China business, economics, and politics, and his views on international affairs are widely quoted on CBS, CNN, NPR, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New York Times, and other major news media. He lives in New York City.

Last Updated: March 18, 2024

Conversation

02.18.16

‘Rule by Fear?’

Eva Pils, Taisu Zhang & more
In the just over three years since Xi Jinping assumed leadership of China, observers and scholars of the country have increasingly coalesced around the idea that Xi’s term in office has coincided with a shift in the tone, if not the practice, of...

Media

11.06.15

Xi Jinping’s Taiwan Trap

Isaac Stone Fish
Before Chinese President Xi Jinping had a dream, his predecessor Hu Jintao had a wish: the “peaceful reunification” of China and Taiwan. In fact, all of Xi’s predecessors since Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949 have pined for...

Media

04.13.15

The Chinese Internet Hates Hillary Clinton Even More than Republicans Do

Isaac Stone Fish
On the afternoon of April 12, Hillary Clinton announced her long-expected decision to run for president in 2016. Within hours, Chinese news sites shared the announcement on Weibo, China’s most popular micro-blogging platform, provoking thousands of...

Media

07.30.14

Paper Tiger

Isaac Stone Fish & Rachel Lu
For 10 months, the fate of Zhou Yongkang existed in a space of plausible deniability. Respected Western media outlets had reported that the 71-year-old Zhou, a retired official who served as China's much-feared domestic security czar from 2007...

Conversation

04.12.14

China, Japan, and the U.S.—Will Cooler Heads Prevail?

Ely Ratner, Hugh White & more
U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel's whirlwind tour of China this week saw a tense exchange with his Chinese counterpart, Chang Wanquan, over the intention behind America's "pivot" to Asia, followed by a more measured back-and...

Infographics

03.20.14

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

Isaac Stone Fish & David M. Barreda from EG365
The greatest unsolved mystery in China right now is not the disappearance of Malaysian airliner MH370 but the fate of Zhou Yongkang, the feared former head of China’s security apparatus. From 2007 to 2012 a member of China’s top political body, the...

Media

02.13.14

Did President Xi’s Dumpling Outing Create a Pilgrimage Site?

Isaac Stone Fish & Helen Gao
Beijing, China—It’s well after lunch and Liu Fengju still hasn’t gotten her food. The sixty-seven-year-old wife of a retired railway worker came to Beijing to spend Spring Festival, the annual seven-day Chinese New Year celebration, with her niece...