Roger Garside

As a diplomat, development banker, capital markets advisor, and author, I spent decades working in China and other nations ruled by dictatorships or undergoing radical transition to economic and political freedom. These experiences on the front-line of change have given me a unique understanding of how the interaction of politics and economics is determining China’s future.

As a British diplomat, I served in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution, and again during the struggle for the succession to Chairman Mao. I then taught Chinese politics at the US Navy Post-graduate School, in California while I wrote Coming Alive: China After Mao (McGraw-Hill, Andre Deutsch and Mentor Books, 1981) which describes how and why Deng Xiaoping won that struggle, and what he would do with his power.

The New York Times called Coming Alive “One of the most cogent and elegant accounts of revolutionary China to have appeared in the West.” The Los Angeles Times described it as “An absolutely splendid work, an extraordinary accomplishment, a collection of wealth, an intellectual, emotional feast to assuage your appetite and whet it at the same time.” The Irish Times declared “On every page of this book there is glowing evidence of a man of genuine understanding and sympathy…His book will come to be regarded as a classic study of contemporary China.”

I hold Master’s degrees in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I speak, read and write Mandarin Chinese.

My reviews of China books have been published in the Economist, the New York Times and the Spectator, and my articles on China in the Nikkei Asian Review and Prospect. My views on China have been quoted in The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times.