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Diana Choyleva
Macroeconomic Analysis
Diana is recognised as one of the foremost experts on the Chinese economy. As Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England from 2003-2013, said of her, “It is increasingly rare...
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Diana is recognised as one of the foremost experts on the Chinese economy. As Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England from 2003-2013, said of her, “It is increasingly rare to find an economist who eschews the conventional wisdom and is prepared to think for herself. In today’s uncertain world it is a priceless quality. Diana Choyleva is such a person.”
In her words, Diana says: “To understand the Chinese economy you have to understand the communist mind, and I have the unlikely advantage of having grown up in Bulgaria before the Berlin Wall came down. But, having been trained by some of the greatest Western economists, I also understand how the market economy works. I am one of the few economists who really knows capitalism, communism and how the two have come together in China.”
Diana set up Enodo Economics, an independent macroeconomic forecasting company, in 2016 to untangle complexity, challenge the consensus and make sense of the future.
For 16 years prior she worked at Lombard Street Research, most recently as their chief economist and head of research. In that role, she set the agenda for the firm’s team of economists and strategists while conducting her own global analysis. She joined LSR after completing her master’s degree in economics in 2000, and over the years has covered a wide range of developing and developed economies. Diana became a director of LSR in 2005 and headed the firm’s UK service from then until 2009. Between 2010 and 2013 she was based in Hong Kong overseeing LSR’s expansion in Asia.
She is best known for her analysis of China, including the book she co-wrote in 2011, ‘The American Phoenix – and why China and Europe will struggle after the coming slump’. Diana writes regular opinion pieces for the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, etc. She has extensive global experience engaging with all manner of audiences and has made frequent television appearances, including on BBC’s Newsnight on the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed.
Nigel Inkster
Geopolitical and Intelligence Analysis
Nigel has had a long career as a security and intelligence expert. Understanding China is not just about China in isolation. To understand China, you have to be able...
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Nigel has had a long career as a security and intelligence expert. Understanding China is not just about China in isolation. To understand China, you have to be able to read its long-term strategic intentions, especially at this time of tectonic political change. As James Mulvenon at SOS International LLC says, “Nigel Inkster fuses impressive academic learning with decades of experience as a senior intelligence professional.”
In his words, Nigel says: “I have followed China's development from the Cultural Revolution to the present day and have sought to analyse this within both the context of China's history and culture and the contemporary global strategic context. I regularly read, listen to and watch Chinese-language media and seek to combine what I learn from this with my own first-hand experience.”
He worked for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London think-tank, from 2007 to 2017. Prior to that he served for 31 years in the British Secret Intelligence Service, retiring at the end of 2006 as assistant chief and director of operations and intelligence.
His research has focused on transnational terrorism, insurgency, transnational organised crime, cyber security, intelligence and security and the evolving character of conflict. He has written and broadcast on all these topics and has also been engaged in a variety of para-diplomatic activities on behalf of the UK government, including leading a Sino-UK Track 1.5 Cyber Security Dialogue. In 2020, he authored “The Great Decoupling: China, America and the Struggle for Technological Supremacy”, a book published by Hurst and which Professor Rory Medcalf described as, “A timely, sane and compelling account of the techno-strategic contest that will shape the worlds of 2020s and beyond”. In 2016, he authored China’s Cyber Power, an IISS Adelphi book published by Routledge.
He graduated from St John’s College Oxford with a BA in oriental studies (Chinese). He is married with two children and one grandchild and lives in London.
TL Tsim
Political Analysis
TL Tsim has studied China’s political scene since the 1970s. Immersed in the ever-changing complexities of Chinese politics and culture, he ensures that Enodo’s analysis stays...
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TL Tsim has studied China’s political scene since the 1970s. Immersed in the ever-changing complexities of Chinese politics and culture, he ensures that Enodo’s analysis stays grounded in the realities of a country where economics and politics are connected in a way alien to most Western commentators.
In his words, TL Tsim says: "When I analyse the politics of China, I am always mindful of the country's dynastic history and the behaviour of its people. At the heart of it is a civilisation which has survived intact for 5,000 years and a culture which is shared by 1.3 billion people over 9.6 million square kilometres. Chinese people respond quickly to material incentives, but do not take so readily to political change. The Chinese culture is very unyielding. I believe you will not understand Chinese politics without coming to grips with Chinese culture."
TL read Chinese politics at the University of Manchester and worked as a journalist before starting his own consultancy.
He has published extensively, including “From Culture to Civilisation”, six volumes of his work published in Chinese by Oxford University Press. He is a Justice of the Peace and is a director of three listed companies in Hong Kong and New York.
He lives in Hong Kong.
Fraser Howie
Financial Markets Analysis
Fraser has worked in China’s financial markets as a practitioner and a researcher since the 1990s, giving him a rigorous understanding of the markets that is unrivalled. The book he co-authored with Carl Walters...
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Fraser has worked in China’s financial markets as a practitioner and a researcher since the 1990s, giving him a rigorous understanding of the markets that is unrivalled. The book he co-authored with Carl Walters, Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise, was named by The Economist as one of its books of the year in 2011. The weekly said: “Two bankers with years of experience in China shine an unprecedented light on the remarkable 32-year effort to build the country's financial system—on its vices, virtues and many conflicts of interest.”
In his words, Fraser says: “Never accepting anything at face value is key to understanding China. With decades of direct investment experience coupled with in-depth research I have perhaps a unique perspective which allows a better handle on Chinese capital markets than most other observers."
Fraser is co-author of two more books on the Chinese financial system, “Privatizing China: Inside China’s Stock Markets” and “To Get Rich is Glorious!: China’s Stock Market in the ‘80s and ‘90s”.
He studied natural sciences (physics) at Cambridge University and Chinese at Beijing Language and Culture University. He has worked for Baring Securities, Bankers Trust, Morgan Stanley, CICC and CLSA, where from 2003 to 2012 he was a managing director in the listed derivatives and synthetic equity department.
Fraser’s work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, China Economic Quarterly and the Nikkei Asian Review. He is a regular commentator on CNBC, Bloomberg and the BBC.
Dinny McMahon
Banking and Financial Markets Analysis
Dinny spent a decade working as a financial journalist in Beijing and Shanghai. As the Wall Street Journal’s finance correspondent, he tracked closely the evolution of China’s...
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Dinny spent a decade working as a financial journalist in Beijing and Shanghai. As the Wall Street Journal’s finance correspondent, he tracked closely the evolution of China’s shadow banking system and the rapid expansion in corporate debt that followed the Global Financial Crisis. Dinny is also the author of China’s Great Wall of Debt: Shadow Banking, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans, and the End of Chinese Miracle, which The Economist said "comes closer than any previous writer to covering the Chinese economy as Michael Lewis, the hugely popular author of The Big Short, might do."
In his words, Dinny says, “China’s financial system needs to be understood from the bottom up. Top-down policy is invariably implemented by firms and lower level bureaucrats in ways shaped by their own interests, incentives, and priorities, and not the interest of the leaders in Beijing. When trying to understand changes in China’s financial system I start by asking myself the question, “what aren’t I seeing.”
Dinny spent two years in Beijing and Kunming learning Chinese before spending a year at the John Hopkins SAIS campus in Nanjing to study international relations. After that he wrote for Dow Jones Newswires in Shanghai, where he also contributed to the Far Eastern Economic Review, before moving to Beijing with WSJ. He wrote China’s Great Wall of Debt while a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington DC, before moving to MacroPolo, the Paulson Institute’s think tank in Chicago, where he focused on China’s efforts to clean up its financial system.
Calum MacLeod
China News That Matters
Beijing-based for over two decades, Calum has got to grips with multiple aspects of China’s remarkable transformation. A fluent Mandarin speaker, and former China correspondent for The Times...
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Beijing-based for over two decades, Calum has got to grips with multiple aspects of China’s remarkable transformation. A fluent Mandarin speaker, and former China correspondent for The Times, he’s reported from every province - and helped build factories in some as an investment consultant for British firms. Calum is the co-author of ‘China Remembers’, an oral history containing “some of the most honest, varied and compelling accounts of the country ever compiled”.
In his words, “Covering China is an often frustrating but endlessly fascinating occupation. Long rich in contradictions, the PRC is run by a regime both stronger and yet more fearful than I’ve ever known it. Rejoice that it’s also home to personalities big enough to sprinkle optimism however bleak the outlook.”
Calum studied Chinese at Oxford University. He has worked at China advisory firm Batey Burn, as Beijing bureau chief for The Independent, and as Asia correspondent for USA Today, reporting from as far west as Kyrgyzstan, south to Indonesia and east to Japan. He co-wrote the guidebook ‘Uzbekistan - The Golden Road to Samarkand’, described by the New York Times as “one of those rare travel guides that is a joy to read whether or not you are planning a trip.”
Calum lives in London.
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