John Lee is a Fellow on Technology with the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis and a TOY Senior Fellow with Asia Society Switzerland. He is also the director of East West Futures, a consultancy specializing in China's high-tech industries, political economy, and military capabilities. He holds master's degrees from the Australian National University and King's College London and is a qualified Australian legal practitioner.

John was a senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin and a visiting fellow at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, National University of Singapore, and previously served in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australian Department of Defence. Currently, he is a researcher at the Leiden Asia Centre. John co-leads the China Semiconductor Observatory project funded by the European Union and is a member of the European research consortium Digital Power China.

His research focuses on China's role in the semiconductor and automotive industries, telecommunications and the Internet of Things, and governance of cyberspace and the Internet. He also works on defense sector matters, including military applications of artificial intelligence. John's work has been published by a range of academic and think tank publishers, and he has been published and quoted in major international media outlets, including the Financial Times, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, the South China Morning Post, and Le Monde Diplomatique.