Jonathan Ward

D.C.’s so-called China hawks are accused by more dovish commentators of overexaggerating China’s threat to US dominance. But thinkers like Jonathan Ward argue China’s grand strategy is far more sophisticated than commonly appreciated. One only has to look at how its sudden EV dominance has caught the West off-guard. It is a genuine competitor and Ward believes it will take all of the US’s diplomatic, military and economic might to win this battle.

Dr. Ward is a long-time student of China. He completed his undergraduate studies in Russian and Chinese language at Columbia University. He then earned his PhD in China-India relations at the University of Oxford, accessing Chinese-language archives that the Chinese Communist Party has since closed to the world. Ward subsequently lived and worked in China, India, Russia, Latin America and the Middle East. Along the way, he learned Russian, Chinese, Spanish and Syrian and Egyptian Arabic, among other languages. As a subject matter expert, he has been an advisor to the US Department of Defense on Chinese long-term strategy and has briefed various US government audiences.

Ward is also a graduate of the Oxford Chicago Valuation Programme, a joint program in corporate finance and valuation taught by the University of Oxford’s Said Business School and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. This grounding in finance makes Ward one of the few geopolitical strategists easily able to draw out market implications of current affairs. Through his strategy consulting company, Atlas Organization, Dr. Ward helps Fortune 500 companies and financial institutions understand US-China global competition, improve their risk assessments on China and build new global strategies that can withstand historic geopolitical change. He has advised leading American corporations in the technology, manufacturing and finance sectors.

Jonathan Ward is the author of The Decisive Decade. It’s a call to action to the US and its allies. Ward focuses on harnessing the power of Western institutions, both private and public, in helping return the US-China relationship to peace through strength. Dr. Ward is also the author of China’s Vision of Victory, a guide to the Chinese government’s global grand strategy. The Financial Times called it “one of the first books to make the explicit argument for containment of China by the West” and the National Interest described it as “primed to serve as a defining pocket guide for Washington’s new cold warriors in the years to come.”