Joshua Eisenman

Joshua Eisenman’s (马佳士) research focuses on the political economy of China’s development and its foreign relations with the United States and the developing world—particularly Africa. His work has been published in top academic journals including World Development, Development and Change, Journal of Contemporary China and Cold War History, and in popular outlets such as Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Policy. His views have been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist and The New Republic.

Eisenman’s newest book, Red China’s Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune (Columbia University Press, 2018), received the honorable mention for the 2019 Robert W. Hamilton Book Award. In it he explains how more capital investment and better farming techniques increased agricultural productivity growth in Maoist China. In China Steps Out: Beijing’s Major Power Engagement with the Developing World (Routledge, 2018), he worked with Eric Heginbotham to analyze China’s policies toward the developing world. Eisenman’s second book, China and Africa: A Century of Engagement (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), co-authored with David Shinn, was named one of the top three books about Africa by Foreign Affairs. Eisenman and Shinn’s next volume, under advance contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press, will examine the China-Africa political and security relationship.

Eisenman has been a visiting faculty member at Fudan University (summer 2017), Peking University (summer 2016), and NYU–Shanghai (2011–12). He was a policy analyst on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (2003–05) and has been senior fellow for China studies at the American Foreign Policy Council since 2006. Before coming to Notre Dame in 2019, he was assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

Eisenman holds a PhD in political science from UCLA, an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) where he studied at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, and a BA in East Asian Studies from The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.