EAI-ISAS Series Launch: 14 November, 2024
China and India: Two Giants Shaping the Global Economy
About the Chairpersons and Speakers (In Order of Presentation)
Associate Professor Iqbal Singh Sevea is Director of the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is an internationally recognised scholar of contemporary and modern South Asia whose core research focuses on South Asian politics, social and political thought, governance and Islamic thought. He has held academic appointments in leading institutions globally and is the author of several publications.
Before joining ISAS, Associate Professor Sevea was an Associate Professor with the Department of History at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where he was a faculty member from 2012 to 2021. Prior to this, he was an Assistant Professor and the Coordinator of the Contemporary Islam Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His publications include The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal: Islam and Nationalism in Late Colonial India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), India and the Future of G20: Shaping Policies for a Better World (New Delhi: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023) and Islamic Political Thought in Modern South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2024). He has also published articles and chapters on ethnonationalism in South Asia, the Partition and its aftermath, culture and state ideology in Pakistan, modern Islamic thought, the spread of transnational Islamic movements across the Indian Ocean, conceptions of bodily piety in South Asia and Muslim education in South Asia.
Associate Professor Sevea holds a DPhil in History from the University of Oxford. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history from NUS and a master’s degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Dr Teh Kok Peng was appointed as a Member of the NUS East Asian Institute (EAI) Management Board in 2015. In 2018, he succeeded Professor Wang Gungwu as Chairman of EAI. Among Dr Teh’s contributions as Chairman of EAI are the initiation of a strategic review of the EAI Board. Following this, the board was reconstituted to include members from the corporate sector, harnessing a more diverse range of relevant expertise in service of the institute’s mission of promoting academic and policy-oriented research on East Asian development. He received the Outstanding Service Award from NUS in August 2024, in recognition of his inspiring leadership and dedicated service.
Dr Teh served as President of GIC Special Investments from April 1999 to June 2011, and oversaw investments in private equity, infrastructure and international venture funds. Prior to this, he was concurrently Deputy Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Deputy Managing Director of GIC. He began his career with the World Bank, joining its Young Professionals Programme in 1975.
Dr Teh was formerly Chairman of Ascendas Pte Ltd and Azalea Asset Management Pte Ltd. He was a member on various boards, including China International Capital Corporation, Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation, Taikang Life Insurance, Sembcorp Industries, Singapore Life Ltd, and the Urban Redevelopment Authority. Dr Teh’s contributions also encompassed the higher education sector, where he served on the boards of the National University of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and Institute of Policy Studies. Additionally, he was President of the Economic Society of Singapore from 1992 to 1997, succeeding the late Professor Lim Chong Yah.
Dr Teh obtained First Class Honours in Economics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, and a Doctorate in Economics at Nuffield College, Oxford University, England. He attended the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School in the fall of 1989.
Ms Sim Ann is Senior Minister of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of National Development. She is a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Holland-Bukit Timah GRC, Deputy Government Whip and Chairperson of the PAP Women’s Wing.
Ms Sim was educated at Hwa Chong Junior College from 1992 to 1993. In 1997, she obtained a B.A (Honours) from Oxford University. She was awarded an M.A from Stanford University in 2009. Sim Ann has also obtained a Graduate Diploma in Translation and Interpretation from the Nanyang Technological University. Ms Sim started her career in 1998 as an Assistant Director for Finance Policy and Planning at the Ministry of Health. From 2000 to 2003, she worked at the Ministry of Home Affairs as an Assistant Director for Implementation Planning, before moving to the Ministry of Trade and Industry, where she was Deputy Director for Trade until 2006. Between 2007 and 2009, she was the Regional Director (East China) for IE Singapore and in 2009, she became the Director for the National Population Secretariat. She left the Civil Service in 2011.
Ms Sim first stepped into the political arena when she contested in the Holland-Bukit Timah GRC during the 2011 General Elections. She is currently the MP for the Holland-Bukit Timah GRC as one of the four-member People’s Action Party (PAP) team led by Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan. The other PAP MPs for Holland-Bukit Timah are Christopher de Souza and Edward Chia.
Dr Li Li is a Senior Research Professor and the Deputy Director of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, China. She also serves as the Deputy Secretary-General of the Chinese Association for South Asian Studies. She is currently also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, and the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Quarterly Journal of International Politics, a top CSSCI (Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index) journal. She received her doctorate degree in international relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University of India in January 2008. She is the author of ‘Security Perception and China-India Relations’ (New Delhi: KW Publishers, 2009). Her current research interests include China-India relations, South Asian politics and security, and major-power relations in the Asia-Pacific region.
Professor C Raja Mohan is a Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) at the National University of Singapore. He was the Director of ISAS, from May 2018 to December 2021. He was Professor of South Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Professor C Raja Mohan is one of India’s leading commentators on India’s foreign policy. He has been associated with a number of think tanks in New Delhi, including the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, the Centre for Policy Research and the Observer Research Foundation. He was also the founding director of Carnegie India, New Delhi – the sixth international centre of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC. He was the Henry Alfred Kissinger Chair in International Affairs at the United States Library of Congress, Washington DC, from 2009 to 2010. He served on India’s National Security Advisory Board. He led the Indian Chapter of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs from 1999 to 2006.
He writes a regular column for the Indian Express and was earlier the Strategic Affairs Editor for The
Hindu newspaper, Chennai. He is on the editorial boards of a number of Indian and international journals on world politics.
Professor Mohan has a Master’s degree in Nuclear Physics and a PhD in International Relations. Among his recent books is Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific (2013) and Modi’s World: Expanding India’s Sphere of Influence (2015).
Prof P. S. Srinivas (Srini) is Visiting Research Professor at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore. Before joining NUS in 2021, he worked with the New Development Bank (NDB), Shanghai, China as Director General, Front Office of the President. Prior to the NDB, he worked at the World Bank, Washington DC, USA for twenty years in a variety of technical and leadership roles in financial and private sector development in the Latin America and Caribbean, South Asia, and East Asian & the Pacific Regions.
He began his international career at the Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines and his professional career at ICICI, Mumbai, India. Having worked in over thirty countries, including in China, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines, over the past three decades, Dr Srinivas has extensive experience in advising governments around the world at the senior-most levels on a variety of development issues.
Prof Srinivas has taught Finance and Public Policy at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad for six years as Associate Professor and Visiting Professor. His current work on China focuses on its financial sector, RMB internationalization, and its role as a global creditor. He also works on ideas to reform the global financial architecture and innovations in climate finance.
Prof Srinivas holds PhD and MA degrees from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA; a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India; and a B. Tech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India.
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 NUS. Before joining NUS, he was Director of the IMF–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.
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).
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 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 B.A. in Economics.
