Fellow at the Belfer Center
Dr. Julian Gewirtz is a scholar, practitioner, and former government official focusing on China, U.S.-China relations, and U.S. foreign policy.
Gewirtz served in multiple roles over four years in the Biden administration, including leading the White House team responsible for coordinating U.S. policy on China as Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), counseling senior White House leadership on the full range of national security and foreign policy matters as Senior Advisor to the Principal Deputy National Security Advisor, managing a global team of diplomats as Deputy China Coordinator at the State Department, and leading work on U.S.-China technology competition and transatlantic coordination on China as NSC Director for China.
Gewirtz is the author of three books: Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s, which was named a best book of the year by Foreign Affairs and BBC History, Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China, which The Economist called “a gripping read, highlighting what was little short of a revolution in China’s economic thought,” and Your Face My Flag: Poems.
Gewirtz was previously Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Lecturer in History at Harvard University and Columbia University, and a special advisor at the Department of Energy in the Obama administration.
Gewirtz was recently named one of "50 people shaping our society in 2025" by the Washington Post. He received his doctoral degree in modern Chinese history in 2018 from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 2013.