Alexandra Harney is the author of The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage (Penguin Press, 2008) and a respected voice on socio-economic issues in China and Japan.

The China Price, which drew on two years of undercover reporting, examines the human and environmental cost of China’s success as the world’s factory through the stories of ordinary Chinese. The book, published in six languages and optioned for adaptation to film and television, was named a best book of the year on globalization by Library Journal.

A frequent speaker on economic and social issues in China and Japan, Alexandra spent seven years as a correspondent and editor at The Financial Times, covering China and Japan. She has also written for the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Forbes, Slate, the China Economic Quarterly and Foreign Policy.

A Mandarin and Japanese speaker, Alexandra is the co-founder of Visibility Media, which conducts research for investors and institutions about economic, business and social issues in Asia, a contributing editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit, and a regular commentator in the media, including the BBC, NPR and Japanese television.

Alexandra has testified before the U.S. Congress about China’s role in the global financial crisis and briefed the Japanese government on Chinese labor issues. She has worked as an aide to Japanese politician Nakatani Gen, studied Japanese security policy at Tokyo University’s graduate school on a Monbushio fellowship, and interpreted for former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi. She was named an Asia Society Asia 21 fellow. In 2010, the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong named her the Young Achiever of the Year.

Alexandra is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an associate fellow at the Asia Society. She sits on the Internationalization Advisory Board at the University of Central Florida’s Center for Global Perspectives.

Alexandra graduated cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University with a degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Alexandra is currently a Blakemore fellow at Tsinghua University in Beijing. In late 2012, she will move to Tokyo as an international affairs fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations.