Reilly has written a theoretically tight and empirically rigorous analysis of China's foreign economic policies. His social science training and area knowledge lead him to complex findings: First, there is variation in the success of the Chinese Communist Party's foreign economic policies. Second, this variation depends in large measure on whether the Party can find, and then coordinate with, sub-state economic actors with independent but overlapping interests, in
the face of variations in state practice in target states. Third, the reality of China's foreign economic practices is quite distant from the U.S. policy makers' unsophisticated stereotype of a monolithic Party-State dictating exploitative outcomes around the world.
James Reilly is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. He has been a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Oxford. He also served as the East Asia Representative of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in China from 2001-2008. His articles have appeared in numerous edited
volumes and academic journals, and he is the author of Strong Society, Smart State: The Rise of Public Opinion in China's Japan Policy, and the co-editor of Australia and China at 40.