Tom focuses on geoeconomic issues, reporting on China’s influence overseas and on how middle powers from Southeast Asia to Latin America are hedging between China and the US. He also looks at emerging economies more broadly, especially India. Tom spent a decade with Dragonomics in Beijing, where he was managing editor of the China Economic Quarterly. A former journalist, he has reported from 30 Chinese provinces and regions, and 30 countries on five continents.

Tom has briefed diplomats and government agencies in the UK and US, spoken at think tanks and universities around the world, and been widely quoted in the international media. He lectures on the China & Globalization MSc course at King’s College London, where he is an affiliate of the Lau China Institute.

Tom studied English literature at Oxford University, modern Chinese history and politics at SOAS in London, and Chinese language in Beijing. He is the author of China’s Urban Billion: The Story Behind the Biggest Migration in Human History (Zed, 2012), and China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road (Zed, 2017). He also wrote a chapter in To Get Rich is Glorious (Brookings, 2019), an academic survey of China’s Reform & Opening process. Tom lives in the UK with his Beijinger wife and two teenage children.