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Tai Ming Cheung

Director
Professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego

Tai Ming Cheung is director of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego, where he teaches courses on the international relations and national security of China and Chinese security and technology policy. Among the areas of his research focus include China’s efforts to become a world-class science and technology power, and the relationship between geo-economics, innovation, and national security. Dr. Cheung is a long-time analyst of Chinese and East Asian defense and national security affairs, especially defense economic, industrial and science, and technological issues.

He is the author of Innovate to Dominate: The Rise of the Chinese Techno-Security State (Cornell University Press, 2022), co-editor of The Gathering Pacific Storm: Emerging US-China Strategic Competition in Defense Technological and Industrial Development (Cambria Press, 2018), editor of Forging China’s Military Might: A New Framework for Assessing Innovation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), and author of Fortifying China: The Struggle to Build a Modern Defense Economy (Cornell University Press, 2009). He was based Hong Kong, China, and Japan from the mid-1980s to 2002 covering political, economic, and strategic developments in Greater China and East Asia, first as a journalist for the Far Eastern Economic Review from 1988-1993 and subsequently as a political and business risk consultant for a number of companies, including PricewaterhouseCoopers. Dr. Cheung has a PhD in War Studies from King’s College, London.

Expertise & Interests

  • China
  • Technology and national security
  • Defense innovation
  • East Asian security
  • Geoeconomics, innovation, and national security
  • Great power competition
tcheung@ucsd.edu