Zongyuan Zoe Liu

Dr. Zongyuan Zoe Liu is the Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York City. Her work focuses on international finance, sovereign wealth funds, industrial policies, and the geoeconomics of energy transition. Her regional expertise is in East Asia and the Middle East. Dr. Liu is the author of "Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System?" (Cambridge University Press, February 2022) and "Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions" (Harvard University Press, June 2023). "Sovereign Funds" is the 2024 Winner of the PROSE Award in Business, Finance, and Management.

Dr. Liu teaches in the capacity of an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) of Columbia University. She is a columnist for Foreign Policy and also a regular contributor to policy-relevant journals and newspapers, such as Foreign Affairs, The International Economy, Newsweek, and The Washington Post. Her research has been featured in The Economist, Financial Times, The Guardian, New York Times, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal, among others.

Prior to joining CFR, Dr. Liu was an assistant professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, D.C. She joined the Bush School after post-doctoral fellowships at the Columbia-Harvard “China and the World Program” and the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

Dr. Liu received her PhD in international relations from Johns Hopkins University. She is also a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder. Her paper on BRICS Collective De-dollarization Statecraft received the 2021 Best Paper Award from the International Studies Association (West) annual conference.