Seong-Hyon Lee

Visiting Scholar | Asia Center, Harvard University

Seong-Hyon Lee, PhD (李成賢), is a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Asia Center. He is currently writing a book titled 100-Year Competition Between the U.S. and China: China’s Rise and America’s Response, set to be published in 2024. Previously, he held positions as the director of the Center for Chinese Studies and the director of the Department of Unification Studies at the Sejong Institute, a policy think tank in Seoul. He has provided briefings to South Korean presidential candidates and ranking lawmakers and delivered popular TV lectures on JTBC national broadcaster. He also authored The U.S.-China Competition: Who Will Rule the World? (2019).

A Seoul native, Dr. Lee has lived a total of 22 years in the United States, China and Japan, including 11 years in Beijing. He served as an internal reviewer for the International Crisis Group (ICG), focusing on geopolitical analysis, including the China-North Korea intrigue. He was a Pantech Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University and a visiting scholar at the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. He was a Salzburg Global Fellow and served as a faculty member for the Salzburg Seminar.

A graduate of Grinnell College, Harvard University and Tsinghua University—the alma mater of Xi Jinping—he has been invited to speak at numerous academic and policy institutions and media forums. These include the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard Kennedy School, the U.S. Congress, Stanford University, the RAND Corporation, the University of Pennsylvania, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the Hudson Institute, the Asia Society, the German Marshall Fund, the Stimson Center, the National Assembly and the Boao Forum. His interviews and comments have appeared in The New York Times, BBC, Bloomberg, CNN, Barron’s, Los Angeles Times, the National Interest, PBS NewsHour, Nikkei Asia, South China Morning Post and Japan Times. He continues to write columns about international affairs for South Korean newspapers.