Eric Li

Eric Li is a venture capitalist and political scientist. After studying economics at Berkeley and Stanford he returned to China to write a PhD in political science at Fudan University, where he became a critic of the notion that China’s progress should follow the path of the West’s free-market principles. In his public lectures and his book Party Life: Chinese Governance and the World Beyond Liberalism (2023), he argues that globalization has run out of steam and that the Chinese model offers a viable alternative to Western liberal democracy. Li is chairman of Chengwei Capital, and he is founder and chairman of the news site Guancha.cn. As a trustee of Fudan University’s China Institute and chairman of its advisory council, and as member of the boards of the School of SciTech Business at the University of Science and Technology of China, the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, the Asia Society Hong Kong, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), he knows both the business world and the world of academia very well. Li is a frequent contributor to leading global publications such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, Financial Times, and The Economist.