Experts

Evan A. Feigenbaum

Fast Facts

  • Vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
  • Former deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia (2007–2009)
  • Former deputy assistant secretary of state for Central Asia (2006–2007)
  • Expertise on China, South Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, nuclear nonproliferation

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • American Defense and Security
  • Asia
  • Trade

Evan A. Feigenbaum, practitioner senior fellow, is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees Carnegie's research in Washington, Beijing, and New Delhi on a dynamic region encompassing both East Asia and South Asia. Initially an academic with a PhD in Chinese politics from Stanford University, Feigenbaum’s career has spanned government service, think tanks, the private sector, and three major regions of Asia.

From 2001 to 2009, he served at the U.S. State Department as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia (2007–2009), deputy assistant secretary of state for Central Asia (2006–2007), member of the policy planning staff with principal responsibility for East Asia and the Pacific (2001–2006), and an adviser on China to Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, with whom he worked closely in the development of the U.S.-China senior dialogue.

Following government service, Feigenbaum worked in the private and nonprofit sectors: He was vice chairman of the Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago and the co-founder of MacroPolo, its digital venture on the Chinese economy; head of the Asia practice at the markets consultancy Eurasia Group, a global political risk consulting firm; and senior fellow for East, Central, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before government service, he worked at Harvard University (1997–2001) as lecturer on government in the faculty of arts and sciences and as executive director of the Asia-Pacific Security Initiative and program chair of the Chinese Security Studies Program in the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He taught at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (1994–1995) as lecturer of national security affairs and was a consultant on China to the RAND Corporation (1993–1994).

He is the author of three books and monographs, including The United States in the New Asia (CFR, 2009, co-author) and China’s Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear to the Information Age (Stanford University Press, 2003), which was selected by Foreign Affairs as a best book of 2003 on the Asia-Pacific, as well as numerous articles and essays.

Evan A. Feigenbaum News Feed

Taiwan has earned the world’s admiration for its fast and highly effective response to the coronavirus pandemic. As of June 1, Taiwan had only 443 confirmed infections and 7 deaths among a population of 24 million—and even has a functioning professional baseball league. This comes despite early modeling that projected Taiwan to have one of the highest risks of importing cases from China.
Evan Feigenbaum Foreign Policy
Join us for a virtual edition of the Ambassador William C. Battle Symposium on American Diplomacy as we take an in-depth look at U.S.–Chinese relations during a time of global upheaval. You can join us for all of the presentations, or just some of them. Feel free to come and go as needed.
Evan Feigenbaum Miller Center Presents
Digitization and new technologies like machine learning are changing the future of work and service delivery. But they will also mean more competition and raise the bar for smaller economies that cannot match the ability of behemoths like the United States, China, and Japan to simply develop and deploy new hardware to scale. For a smaller economy like Taiwan, then, the best way to win the future as knowledge-based industries grow in scope and importance is to nurture and then harness relevant skills and better know-how within the workforce. Indeed, Taiwan offers a useful example of how smaller economies might leverage skills and workforce development to overcome the inherent challenges of their smaller size.
Evan Feigenbaum The National Interest
Before the coronavirus hit, Taiwan’s 2019 headline growth figures were nothing short of stellar. Its economy grew at an impressive 3.31 percent during the fourth quarter of 2019, propelling President Tsai Ing-Wen into her second term on a high note and giving Taiwan businesses a boost. But that success owed much to one fact: bluntly stated, Taiwan was having a terrific U.S.-China trade war.
Evan Feigenbaum The National Interest
In February 1972, then president Richard M. Nixon landed in Beijing to formalize the establishment of official contact between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. That journey to Beijing had been a long one for Nixon—a man who began his career as a noted anti-Communist and was vice president to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the last U.S. president to make a state visit to Taiwan, which the United States then recognized as the seat of the legitimate government of all China.
Evan Feigenbaum Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Because it imports nearly all of the fuel that powers its economy, Taiwan is unusually vulnerable to energy market risks. Volatility has grown in the world’s major oil-producing regions, especially the Middle East, where the specter of conflict between the United States and Iran looms ever larger. What is more, over the long term, countries dependent on oil export revenue will need to successfully adapt to a world characterized by declining oil demand. They will likely struggle to diversify their economies and ensure employment, yielding another significant source of instability. Meanwhile, commodity markets, from crude oil to natural gas, have been buffeted by geopolitical volatility, political and investment risks, and technological disruption.
Evan Feigenbaum Carnegie Endowment for International Peace