Mr George Magnus

George Magnus’s principal research focus is the political economy of China, and the implications and consequences of its economic development path.

George received an MSc in Economics from SOAS, authoring a thesis on the performance of China and India under planning, and undertook further postgraduate research in developing economies at the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois. He subsequently worked at the Foreign Office’s Central Office of Information before embarking on a career in the finance sector that took him to Lloyds Bank and Bank of America, and then as Chief Economist to both SG Warburg, and finally to UBS, where he stayed from 1997 until 2016.

Since retiring from UBS, George has been a Research Associate at both the SOAS China Institute, and the China Centre at Oxford University. He engages regularly with and speaks at commercial, financial, educational and government institutions, and writes and appears in a wide range of media outlets including the Financial Times, the Times, The Telegraph, the Guardian, the Spectator, the New Statesman, Prospect, Bloomberg, the BBC, Deutsche Welle, France24, and Voice of America. All his public domain work can be found at his website.

George contributes periodically to the China in Context podcast series, and to the SOAS China Institute's blog.

SCI Blog posts

• China's NPC lacks effective solution for economic woes - 12 March 2024
• Some of China’s best laid plans are going awry - 23 February 2022
• Going after the private sector: Xi on a mission - 24 August 2021
• Is China’s economic rise sustainable? - 19 May 2021
• Economics, National Security, and Competition With China - 05 March 2021
• Mr. Xi zooms into Davos - 28 January 2021
• Can China seize the moment? - 27 October 2020
• Xi’s Dual Circulation Strategy: Can it succeed? - 14 September 2020

China economy and political economy.