Jessica Chen Weiss

Jessica Chen Weiss is an American international relations scholar specializing in China–United States relations. She is currently the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Cornell University's government department and Senior Fellow in Chinese Politics, Foreign Policy, and National Security at Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.

Early life and education
Weiss was born and grew up in Seattle, Washington. She obtained a bachelor of arts degree from Stanford University in 2003 and attended the University of California, San Diego, graduating in 2008 with a PhD.

Career
In 2014, Oxford University Press published her book Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations.

She was senior advisor to the United States Department of State's Policy Planning Staff from August 2021 to July 2022. She is the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Cornell University's government department.

She has advocated for the U.S. government to avoid an "overly confrontational" approach in its relations with China, and published an article she wrote in Foreign Affairs in August 2022 espousing this approach. That article was described by Ian Johnson in The New Yorker as catapulting her "to the front ranks of the growing number of China experts concerned that U.S. foreign policy suffers from an unhealthy focus on China as a threat."

Weiss is a participant of the Task Force on U.S.-China Policy convened by Asia Society's Center on US-China Relations.

In 2024, Weiss left Cornell to become the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Books

 * Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (Oxford University Press, 2004)

Articles

 * The Perils of Estrangement (in What Does America Want From China?), Foreign Affairs, May 30, 2024 (co-authored with James Steinberg)
 * Taiwan and the True Sources of Deterrence, Foreign Affairs, November 30, 2023 (co-authored with Bonnie S. Glaser and Thomas J. Christensen)


 * Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China. 2013, International Organization.
 * Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations. 2014, Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199387557