'Subversion and Seduction: China’s Economic Statecraft' - a new book by CWP alum Audrye Wong
Subversion and Seduction counters the conventional wisdom that China commands geopolitical influence simply by virtue of its economic prowess. It shows how China’s use of economic statecraft has met with successes but also failures. Effectiveness depends on both China’s inducement strategy—subversive or legitimate—and the target country’s political setting, or the level of public accountability. This argument draws on evidence from field interviews and detailed case studies spanning Southeast Asia, the Indo-Pacific region, and Europe. The book provides a new framework to understand the varied outcomes of economic inducements and the conditions under which economic capabilities translate into political influence; analyzes the outcomes of China’s economic influence across multiple contexts and what this means for China’s rise; and assesses the broader implications for great power competition and U.S.-China relations.
Wong, Audrye, Subversion and Seduction: China’s Economic Statecraft (New York, NY, 2026; online edn, Oxford Academic, 11 May 2026), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197823187.001.0001, accessed 14 July 2026.
Audrye Wong is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she is focusing on China’s foreign policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, economic statecraft, and how authoritarian states use informational tools to alter public discourse and shape political processes in democracies—what she calls “informational statecraft.” Concurrently she is an assistant professor of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California.
Previously, Dr. Wong was a Grand Strategy, Security, and Statecraft Postdoctoral Fellow in a joint program of the Harvard Kennedy School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program. She has also held affiliations with Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Wilson Center, the Brookings Institution, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is fluent in Mandarin.
Dr. Wong is working on a book on the strategies and effectiveness of economic inducements, as well as other projects on China’s overseas propaganda and foreign influence activities. She has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals and the popular press, including in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Journal of East Asian Studies, Asian Security, the China Quarterly, Project Syndicate, and Foreign Affairs.
Dr. Wong received a PhD in security studies from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Her MA and AB are also from Princeton.
Photo Credit: https://academic.oup.com/book/62728
