David M. Lampton

David M. Lampton (born 1946) is George and Sadie Hyman Professor and Director of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and Chairman of The Asia Foundation. He was president of the National Committee on United States-China Relations from 1988-1997. From May 1998 to May 2006 he also was affiliated with The Nixon Center (now the Center for the National Interest) as the founding director of its Chinese Studies Program. Prior to 1988, Dr. Lampton was founding director of the China Policy Program at the American Enterprise Institute and associate professor of political science at Ohio State University where he started his academic career in 1974.

Lampton specializes in Chinese domestic politics, leadership, U.S.-China relations, and Chinese foreign policy.He is the author of The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (2008), which won Honorable Mention in the Asia Society’s Bernard Schwartz Book Award competition for 2009. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. He has an honorary doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Far Eastern Studies, is an Honorary Senior Fellow of the American Studies Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and is a Gilman Scholar at Johns Hopkins. On June 17, 2010 The National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded Lampton the inaugural Scalapino Prize, an award established in honor of Asia scholar Robert A. Scalapino. Presented at the 2010 Asia Policy Assembly in Washington, D.C., the award was given to Lampton in recognition of his contributions to America’s understanding of the vast changes underway in Asia.He is the recipient of a 2011 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio “Residency Award.” His book, Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping, was published in January 2014.

Lampton is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations Executive Committee and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served on the Board of Trustees of Colorado College from 1999-2013 and now is a Life Trustee.He also serves on the Advisory Boards of the National Bureau of Asian Research and U.S.-China Education Trust.He served as enlisted and commissioned officer of the U.S. Army Reserve, was a fireman at Stanford University, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Eta Sigma academic honorary societies.

On 27 February 2014, Lampton was part of a panel discussion sponsored by the US-Asia Institute entitled "Sino-Japan Dynamics and Implications for The U.S.-Japan Alliance."

In January 2015 Lampton was named the most influential China watcher by the Institute of International Relations at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. Researchers chose him after assessing the credentials of 158 China experts.