Atlantic Council and Rhodium Group announce research partnership on China’s economic trajectory
Multi-year partnership to produce unique insights on China’s economy and implications for Biden Administration policymaking
The Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and Rhodium Group today announced a multi-year partnership dedicated to understanding China’s economy. The flagship project of the partnership will be a data visualization toolset for analyzing China’s economic trajectory. Building on Rhodium Group’s extensive past work tracking China’s policy choices, the first release is scheduled for June 2021, followed by quarterly updates. The project – titled Pathfinder: Anticipating China’s Economic Future – will examine China’s economic direction in six key areas: three external (trade, direct investment, and portfolio investment) and three internal (market competition, financial system, and innovation).
This regularly updated compendium of novel indicators will anchor a new publication series that helps inform the Biden Administration’s economic approach to China, complementing the GeoEconomics Center’s current China Economic Spotlight.
Josh Lipsky, Director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center said, “We are proud to partner with Rhodium Group to shed light on the defining economic challenge of this generation – how to grapple with China’s power. The Atlantic Council’s growing body of work on China is designed to inform smart policymaking, and the crucial missing link in Washington and beyond is a full understanding of how China’s economy truly operates.”
Launched in 2020, the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center is organized around three pillars: the Future of Capitalism, the Future of Money, and the Economic Statecraft Initiative. The Center prides itself on impactful data visualization projects and has a proven track record of internationally recognized work. In the past several months, the Center produced major reports on the rise of central bank digital currencies, the dramatic changes in global monetary policy, and the shifting use of sanctions worldwide.
Addressing the goals of the project, Rhodium Group Founding Partner Daniel Rosen asks, “Is China’s economy diverging so fundamentally from market principles that the only appropriate response is decoupling? Leaders lack a sound analytical framework for approaching this crucial question. If they over- or under-react it will have severe consequences. By fairly gauging the aspects of China’s economic system that matter most we will provide that framework.”
Rhodium Group is recognized for pathbreaking, objective analyses of what makes China’s economy tick and its implications for the United States and other market economy nations, businesses, and workers. To integrate the work of the two organizations, Rosen will also serve as a Senior Fellow within the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. He brings three decades of experience tracking China’s economic evolution.