Sophie Richardson is a senior China advisor at Climate Rights International. She previously directed the China team at Human Rights Watch, overseeing dozens of research projects on government violations inside and outside the country. That work focused on topics including attacks on environmental activists, the forced resettlement of Tibetan nomads, and labor rights violations by Chinese state-owned enterprises in Zambian copper mines. She has extensive advocacy experience in capitals throughout Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and North America, and has regularly appeared in major media.
Richardson has published extensively on China, human rights, and foreign policy, and is the author of China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (Columbia University Press, Dec. 2009), an in-depth examination of China’s foreign policy since 1954’s Geneva Conference, including rare interviews with Chinese policy makers. She speaks Mandarin, and received her doctorate from the University of Virginia and her BA from Oberlin College.
