Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions
Zongyuan Zoe Liu is Maurice R. Greenberg fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Her work focuses on international political economy, global financial markets, sovereign wealth funds, supply chains of critical minerals, development finance, emerging markets, energy and climate change policy, and East Asia-Middle East relations. Dr. Liu’s regional expertise is in East Asia, specifically China and Japan, and the Middle East, specifically Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Dr. Liu is the author of Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System? (Cambridge University Press) and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances it Global Ambitions (Harvard University Press).

No other country in history has so rapidly transformed its economy from being among the world’s poorest and most isolated to one of the world’s largest economies, at the heart of the global supply chain, and a leading source of international investment capital. For the last two decades, China’s sovereign funds have played a significant role in China’s economy, mitigating financial crises and tempering exogenous shocks. In this talk, Dr. Liu will discuss how sovereign funds have supported China’s industrial policies by financing the state’s procurement of strategic overseas assets, bankrolling Chinese enterprises’ mergers and acquisitions abroad, and sponsoring the development of indigenous Chinese technology startups. As Dr. Liu makes clear, sovereign funds are not just for oil exporters. The Communist Party of China is a leader in both foreign exchange reserves investment and economic statecraft, using state capital to encourage domestic economic activity and create spheres of influence worldwide.