A politician, academic, author, think tank leader, lawyer and financial trader, Professor Christine Loh has been at the forefront of Hong Kong public life for more than three decades. She was the Undersecretary for the Environment at the HKSAR Government (2012-17) and a former legislator. Professor Loh has a long record in working on environmental and climate change issues going back to the 1980s.

Her teaching experience includes a course on Non-Market Risks at the Anderson School of Management, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) from 2018-22. She is the visiting Scholar at the Anderson School of Management’s Center for Global Management (2023-24).

Between April 2019 and March 2020, she was the Special Consultant to the Office of the Chief Executive of the HKSAR Government on the ecological civilization aspects of the Greater Bay Area Outline Development Plan. She has also been a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council. Loh has been active in public policy and politics since the 1980s. She founded and was the CEO of the non-profit think tank, Civic Exchange (2000-12), and helped to establish several charitable foundations, and non-profit organizations in Hong Kong related to the environment, equal opportunity, and arts and culture. Professor Loh is a published author of books and many academic and popular works.

Professor Loh is currently a board member of CDP Worldwide, Global Maritime Forum, New Forests Pty Ltd, and Towngas Smart Energy Company Limited. She holds an English law degree from the University of Hull, England, and a Master of Law degree in Chinese and Comparative Law from the City University of Hong Kong. She has been awarded the degree of Doctor of Law, honoris causa, by the University of Hull in 2001, and Doctor of Science, honoris causa by the University of Exeter in 2016.

Dr.  Li is the author and editor of 17 books, including Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping U.S.-China Engagement, The Power of Ideas: The Rising Influence of Thinkers and Think Tanks in China, and Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era. Prior to joining HKU, Li served as director and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center, where he remains a nonresident senior fellow. 

He is also a director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, a Distinguished Fellow of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at University of Toronto, a nonresident fellow at Yale University’s Paul Tsai China Center, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Li received an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Princeton University.

Prior to joining the Institute, he was the senior policy adviser to the assistant deputy minister for Asia Pacific and set up and led the Asia-Pacific policy planning unit at Global Affairs Canada, the Canadian foreign ministry. He had previously served in the department in 2002 as a senior policy adviser to the Canadian foreign minister, working on the G8 and a review of Canadian foreign policy.

From 2007 to 2017, he was an associate professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at HKU. A Hong Kong-based independent consultant from 2001 to 2017, he worked with several foundations and international organizations including the G20 Business Summit, the Clinton Global Initiative, the World Economic Forum and the US-Asia Institute, as well as some corporate clients. He has edited or written several books including a history of Manila in the closing days of the Japanese Occupation, an Asian investment guide, and a survey of the financial services sector in Asia. He began his professional career as a journalist with Asiaweek magazine, part of Time Inc, where he worked from 1988 to 2001 in Hong Kong and Singapore. Born in the Philippines and a citizen of Canada, he was educated at Harvard University and the University of Oxford and in 2000 was awarded an honorary doctorate by Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina.

She often consults for local and international media organizations, startups, and educational institutions. She has produced a dozen books on the news media in China. As scholar-in-residence at the ASHK, Professor Chan plans to continue her ongoing research on media and higher education, with a focus on journalism practices and standards, public information, digital transformation, and the role of media in public life. She is also involved in environmental advocacy through journalism and storytelling. 

Prior to joining HKU in 1998, Chan spent 23 years working as a journalist in New York City, where she reported for the New York Daily News, NBC News, and Chinese language dailies. She has served on the management as well as advisory boards of international and local media organizations, such as the Global Reporting Centre at the University of British Columbia, and the Digital Asia Hub, an independent internet and society research think tank. She has served as chair of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Information and Entertainment. From 2012-2017, she chaired the founding selection panel of the Community Involvement Broadcasting Service, a pioneering program of RTHK, Hong Kong’s public broadcaster.

Chan has won many accolades for her work, with honors including a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, and a George Polk Award for Journalistic Excellence and an International Press Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists. She is the recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Asian American Journalists Association, USA, and the Society of Publishers in Asia.