Financial Statecraft and China’s Long Economic War

Please join us for an exclusive BENS luncheon discussion featuring Zongyuan Zoe Liu, Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for Trade and International Political Economy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

As Washington and Beijing settle into a protracted phase of great-power competition, the economic dimension of this conflict has evolved from simple tariff disputes into a sophisticated "long economic war." Dr. Liu, a leading authority on financial statecraft and the author of Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions, will brief us on how Beijing is leveraging its state-owned capital to secure strategic assets, weaponize supply chains, and insulate itself from Western sanctions.

We will examine the implications of China’s "sovereign leveraged funds"—a distinct model of state capitalism that bypasses traditional reliance on commodity exports—and assess the resilience of the U.S. dollar in the face of fragmented global payment systems. This discussion is particularly timely given the recent shifts in export control enforcement and the evolving role of the RMB in the Global South.

We are grateful to BENS member Raj Kanodia for hosting this gathering at One Vanderbilt.

Please RSVP by February 27 to secure your place at the table.

Organizer:
James Kennedy
jkennedy@bens.org

Cost: $50-150