Minxin Pei (; born December 10, 1957) is a Chinese-American political scientist. He is the current editor of the China Leadership Monitor. He is a specialist on governance in China, U.S.âÂÂEast Asia relations, mass surveillance in China, as well as democratization in developing nations. He is currently the Tom and Margot Pritzker '72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. He was formerly a senior associate in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Pei earned his bachelor's degree in English from Shanghai International Studies University, and a master's degree and PhD in political science from Harvard University. In addition, he holds an M.F.A. from the University of Pittsburgh. He served as Director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College from July 2009 to June 2019.
Pei has contributed to a number of newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Diplomat, Project Syndicate, Nikkei Asia, Fortune, and Foreign Affairs, and was an opinion columnist of Bloomberg from 2023 to 2024.
Pei is the editor of China Leadership Monitor, an online publication tracking major political and economic developments in China.
In 2008, he was listed as one of the top 100 public intellectuals by Prospect magazine. In 2019, he was the inaugural Library of Congress Chair on U.S.-China Relations.