EAI-ISAS Inaugural Workshop (November 14)
China and India: Two Giants Shaping the Global Economy
About the Chairpersons (In Order of Presentation)
Professor Alfred Schipke is the director of the East Asian Institute and Professor of the Practice of International Finance at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University of Singapore (NUS). Before joining NUS, he was Director of the International Monetary Fund–Singapore Regional Training Institute for Asia and the Pacific in charge of technical assistance, training and research. Prior to that he was Assistant Director and Mission Chief for India and Senior Resident Representative and Mission Chief for China providing policy advice, spearheading analytical work, and coordinating capacity development. He has worked closely with key Chinese economic and financial sector agencies including the People’s Bank of China, the Ministry of Finance, and the financial sector regulatory agencies.
At the IMF, he was also division chief in the Asia and Pacific Department leading the department’s work on fast-growing low-income countries in Southeast Asia (Frontier Economies) and was Mission Chief for Vietnam. In the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department, he negotiated several successful IMF programs including for El Salvador and St. Kitts and Nevis.
He has taught international finance at Harvard Kennedy School and the National School of Development at Peking University and has authored and edited several books and articles. He holds a PhD from Duisburg-Essen University, an MPA from Harvard, and a BA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Mr Clement Tan is Assistant Foreign Editor at The Straits Times, where he helps to oversee and conceptualise coverage of South Asia, Oceania, North America, Europe and the Middle East. Previously, he was a reporter focused on Greater China, based in Hong Kong and Beijing with Bloomberg and Reuters, where he covered among other things, the 2014 Umbrella Movement, China-U.S. relations, and the macroeconomics, industrial policy and financial markets of the world’s second-largest economy. Mr Tan is an alumnus of the Columbia Journalism School in New York and the National University of Singapore, where he was part of the University Scholars Programme.
About the Speakers (Alphabetical Order)
Dr Shilpak Ambule grew up in Pune and did his schooling, junior college and graduation from Abhinava Vidyalaya, Fergusson College and BJ Medical College respectively. He has completed the Master’s degree program in Translation and Interpretation (T&I) in Chinese-English from MIIS, Monterey, California.
He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 2002 and after learning Chinese language, spent 8 years in Beijing in the Indian Embassy working as Third Secretary, Second Secretary and First Secretary in the Political Wing and as Chief of Staff to Ambassador. He then served in Headquarters as the Deputy Head of the East Asia Division and as the Chief of Staff of the Indian Foreign Secretary from January 2015 to August 2018. After a brief stint as Deputy High Commissioner of India in Colombo from August 2018 – July 2019, he returned to Delhi and served as Joint Secretary in the External Affairs Minister’s office till 24th June, 2022. He took over as Joint Secretary (East Asia) in June 2022 and continued to hold dual charge till 22 July 2023. He is currently serving as High Commissioner to Singapore since 23 July 2023.
Dr Steven Barnett has become the International Monetary Fund’s Senior Resident Representative in China since February 2020. Prior to that, he worked as an Advisor to the Deputy Managing Director. For much of his career, however, he covered Asia. His positions included Chief of the China Division in the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department, Assistant Director at the IMF Office for Asia and the Pacific in Tokyo, Resident Representative to China, and Resident Representative to Thailand. Prior to joining the IMF in 1997, he earned his PhD in economics from the University of Maryland. He has a Bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University as well as a Master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies, also from Stanford.
Dr Ranil Salgado, a dual national of the U.S. and Sri Lanka, became the IMF Senior Resident Representative for India and Bhutan based in Delhi in March 2024. He has been in the IMF for 28 years and is an Assistant Director in the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department (APD). Prior to his appointment on India and Bhutan, he was most recently the IMF’s mission chief to Japan and supervised work on Timor-Leste and Tonga. He co-edited the book “South Asia’s Path to Resilient Growth” that was published in 2023. Among his previous roles in APD, he served as the mission chief to India (2017-2020), the Marshall Islands, Myanmar, and Nepal, as well as chief of the Regional Studies Division and the IMF Resident Representative in Singapore (2005-2008).
He supervised work on Bhutan, the Maldives, Micronesia and Samoa, among others. His time at the IMF includes work in the Western Hemisphere; Research; and Strategy, Policy, and Review Departments. He attended the University of Pennsylvania (Masters & PhD in economics), along with Harvard University (undergraduate in chemistry) and Cambridge University (Masters in biochemistry).
Professor Zhu Ning is senior partner, head of China for Brunswick Group and a faculty fellow at the Yale University International Center for Finance. He is on leave from Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF), Shanghai Jiaotong University, where he is a deputy dean and professor of finance. He was a Deputy Dean and Oceanwide Chair Professor at National Institute of Finance and PBC School of Finance at Tsinghua University and a Special Term Professor of Finance at University of California, Davis and at Guanghua School of Management at Beijing University. Prior to coming back to Asia, he was a tenured professor of finance at the University of California.
Professor Zhu is global leading expert on China’s economy and financial system and behavioral finance. He has published numerous articles in leading journals in the finance, economics, management and legal fields. In addition to his academic research, Professor Zhu helps asset management companies in a wide range of capacities. During his leave from the University of California in 2008-2010, he implemented his research into practice to lead the quantitative strategies and portfolio advisory teams at Lehman Brothers and Nomura International in Hong Kong, which was top ranked by leading institutional surveys.
He commands extensive consulting experience advising government agencies, such as the PBoC, CSRC, the World Bank, IMF, market regulators, stock and futures exchanges, and some of the largest institutional money managers and investment banks in the world. Professor Zhu is frequently featured in leading media columns, TV programs, and as event keynote speaker. He is the author of the best seller “The Investors’ Enemy” and “China’s Guaranteed Bubble”, both translated into multiple foreign languages and won some of the most prestigious research prizes in China.
Professor Zhu received his B. Econ. Degree from Beijing University, Master of Science degree from Cornell University (NY) and Ph.D. degree (finance) from Yale University (CT)
Mr Teh Kwee Chin has been with GIC Private Limited since 2006. He is a macro specialist covering investment strategies and political economy in Asian economies. In the past one and a half decade, his research focus has been on Greater China and India.
Prior to his current position, Mr Teh was in the Economic Research Department in United Overseas Bank, Singapore. Before that, he was in Cazenove Asia Ltd in Hong Kong and had advised companies on investment projects in mainland China.
Dr Deeparghya Mukherjee is a member of the Economics area in the faculty of Management Studies at the Indian Institute of Management Nagpur. His teaching and research interests include international trade through value chains, trade agreements, global macroeconomics and finance. His research has been published in peer reviewed international journals of repute and he has been quoted by the popular press including the Nikkei Asia and Times of India in the past. Prior to his teaching career, Dr Mukherjee was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore and a Research Fellow at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), New Delhi. He has also worked in Business Analytics with HSBC and Citibank before pursuing his doctoral studies from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.
Mr Mohamed Irshad is the Head of Corporate Affairs for ASEAN at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). He oversees public affairs, government relations, community engagement and various strategic initiatives for TCS across ASEAN. He is also the Founder and President of Roses of Peace, an interfaith non-profit organisation that seeks to build a harmonious, cohesive and resilient Singapore. He is also an Adjunct Faculty of Strategy & Entrepreneurship at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University (SMU).
In 2018, Mr Irshad was appointed by the President of Singapore as one of the youngest Nominated Member of Parliament and served for one term in the 13th Parliament of Singapore. During his term, he was a member of the Singapore-South Asia & Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Parliamentary Group. In recognition of his exemplary contributions to the nation, he was awarded the President’s Volunteerism & Philanthropy Award and the MUIS50 Inspiring Youth Award in 2018. He was conferred the esteemed 7th Abdeali Tayebali Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 and is a Generation T. honouree in the Generation T. list 2019 by Tatler Singapore. In 2023, he was awarded the inaugural Interfaith Youth Leadership Award and was featured on The Peak Power List 2023.
Mr Irshad holds a Bachelor in Business Management and a Master of Science in Communication Management from SMU.
Mr Joe Leahy is the FT’s Beijing Bureau Chief. Previously, he was Asia News Editor, running the FT’s Asia-Pacific operation from Hong Kong. Prior to that he was Brazil Bureau Chief, Mumbai Bureau Chief, Asia Companies Editor and Hong Kong Correspondent for the FT. He has also worked in Indonesia. He has covered events ranging from the 2019 Hong Kong protests and the 2016 Rio Olympics to the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks and the Asian financial crisis in 1998. He jointly won the Society of Publishers in Asia’s Excellence in Journalistic Innovation award in 2024 for investigative reporting on mosque demolitions and modifications in China. He also won Sopa’s “Journalist of the Year” award in 2009.
Ms Priyanka Kishore is the Founder and Principal Economist of Asia Decoded, a macro consultancy which provides advisory services to policy makers, think tanks, corporates and institutional investors. With two decades of experience in macroeconomic research across Asia, her expertise is in analysing long-term economic trends, trade impacts, global value chains, climate change, debt sustainability and alternate scenarios.
Ms Kishore frequently writes for economic and business publications and has authored the chapter Impact of Regional Trade Agreements on the IPEF in the recently published The Making of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework of Prosperity (KAS, ISAS-NUS). She is a columnist for the Nikkei Asia Review (NAR) and makes regular appearances on Bloomberg, CNBC, BBC, CNA and other media outlets. Previously, she was the Chief India and Southeast Asia Economist for Oxford Economics and prior to that, senior economist and strategist in the banking sector.
Dr Taimur Baig, PhD, heads global economics as well as macro strategy for interest rate, credit, and currency at DBS Group Research. He also advises the bank on risk management and investment strategy.
Prior to joining DBS in 2017, Dr Baig was a Principal Economist at the Economic Policy Group, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Earlier, he spent nine years at Deutsche Bank’s Singapore office, where his last position was Managing Director and Chief Economist, Asia. During 1999-2007, he was based in Washington DC, at the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund, where his last position was Senior Economist.
Dr Baig has published extensively for both specialists and a general audience, on areas including monetary policy, digital currency, financial technology, climate change, demographics, frontier markets, fiscal policy efficacy, and financial market contagion. He is the host of “Kopi Time,” a widely followed podcast series on markets and economies.
Dr Baig is an Honorary Advisor to the Global CFO Network, Director Fellow at the Asian Financial Cooperation Association, and Council Member of the Economic Society of Singapore. Dr Baig holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He attended London School of Economics and Wabash College for his Bachelor’s in Economics.
Mr Ravi Balasubramanian heads the India Equity Investments team in GIC’s Equities Department. In this role, he oversees an investment team based in Mumbai that helps manage the India investments of the Equities Department. In addition, he chairs the India Business Group, which helps coordinate GIC’s overall India investment strategy across all public and private asset investment teams.
Mr Balasubramanian joined GIC in 1994 and has led various teams within the Equities department. Prior to his current role, he was Head, Asia Equities Research from 2012 to 2020. Earlier in his career at GIC, he was part of GIC’s North American Equities team managing portfolios that invest in US Equities.
Mr Balasubramanian holds a Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He also holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. In addition, Ravi is a CFA charterholder.
