William H. Overholt

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Dr. William H. Overholt (born March 7, 1945) is a senior research fellow at John F. Kennedy School of Government's Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard University and principal of AsiaStrat LLC, a consulting firm. Overholt is an expert on Asia and US-Asia relations, with a long history of analyzing Asia for both the public and private sectors. He has served as political advisor to several of Asia's major political figures and has done consulting projects for Korea Development Institute, The Nuclear Threat Initiative, the Philippine Department of Agrarian Reform, and Thailand's Ministry of Universities. His consulting experience ranges from strategic planning to foreign affairs to economic development to political strategy for the Conference Board, U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, the Foreign Service Institute, Dean Witter Reynolds, A.G. Becker & Co., MacMillan Bloedel, Honda Motor Company, Tong Yang Securities, 13-D Research, Matterhorn Palmyra Fund, and numerous other corporations and political leaders. He is the author or co-author of nine books, including North Korea: Peace? Nuclear War? (Harvard Research Centers, 2019); China's Crisis of Success (Cambridge University Press, 2018); Renminbi Rising: A New Global Monetary System Emerges (Wiley, 2016); and Asia, America and the Transformation of Geopolitics (Cambridge University Press, 2008). The Rise of China (W.W. Norton, 1993, and many foreign language editions) was the first book to predict China's economic and geopolitical success and won the Mainichi News/Asian Affairs Research Center Special Book Prize. His work on forecasting methods includes books on Political Risk (Euromoney, 198_) and (with William Ascher) Strategic Planning and Forecasting (Wiley, 1983). He edited the first book on nuclear proliferation and nuclear strategies in Asia, Asia’s Nuclear Future (Praeger, 1976). His edited volume, The Future of Brazil (Praeger, 1978) evolved from a country risk study that inspired considerable early work in the field of political risk analysis. In addition, with Zbigniew Brzezinksi, he founded Global Political Assessment in 1976 at Columbia University's Research Institute on International Change and edited the semi-annual periodical until 1985. Overholt's political advising has included intense involvement in Zimbabwe’s movement to independence (1979–1981), South Korean domestic conflicts in 1980, the Philippine revolution of 1986, Burma’s insurgent wars of the late 1980s, and Hong Kong’s transition. He served as head of the Asia Policy Task Force for the 39th President of the United States Jimmy Carter’s campaign in 1976. (Source: DBPedia)