Sarah Beran is a senior fellow at the 21st Century China Center and a partner at Macro Advisory Partners following a 23-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service, where she most recently served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs at the National Security Council. As the President’s principal advisor on China and Taiwan, she managed a wide portfolio including technology export controls, trade policy, Russia sanctions, counternarcotics and Taiwan contingency planning, while leading preparations for heads-of-state summits, reopening senior diplomatic channels with Beijing, and negotiating the first U.S.-China understanding on AI safety in nuclear command and control. 

Weila Gong is a nonresident scholar at the 21st Century China Center, specializing in low-carbon energy transitions and climate policy in China and globally. She is the author of the book "Implementing a Low-Carbon Future" and leads research on coal transition paths in China. Her work has appeared in journals such as The China Quarterly and Environmental Politics. Gong holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Technical University of Munich and degrees from Sun Yat-sen University.

Rick Waters is a senior fellow at the 21st Century China Center and senior director for the Indo-Pacific at Exxon Mobil. He joined the corporation after a 27-year career that culminated in his role as the U.S. State Department’s top China policy official. In that role, he oversaw the creation of the Office of China Coordination, informally known as the China House, and concurrently served as deputy assistant secretary of state for China and Taiwan. He also held multiple roles at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, including during the period between the accidental U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and the Hainan Island incident. After retiring from government service, Waters served as managing director for Northeast Asia at the Eurasia Group, a global geopolitical risk practice, and as director of Carnegie China.

Yin Yuan will start as a postdoctoral fellow at the 21st Century China Center in fall 2025. She earned her Ph.D. in political science from UC San Diego in 2024. Her research examines political communication in China, with a focus on how catchphrases and propaganda shape both elite and public perceptions. Her work has appeared in PNAS and is under review at other leading journals. A recipient of the Smith Richardson World Politics and Statecraft Fellowship, Yuan brings methodological expertise in text-as-data, natural language processing, and machine learning. She has taught courses on political inquiry and text analysis.