Chen Xi is the founder and CEO of Harbor Overseas, a global smart-city consulting company in China. He is also a senior external adviser to the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology, an adjunct associate professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University and an academic committee member at the Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding of Peking University. He was previously the president of Institute of Smart City Planning and Design of Beijing Municipality, and a visiting senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He has also served as the president of the Institute of Smart City Research at the ZTE Corporation and an adviser to the ZTE Strategy Committee. He played a leading role in designing the global and multi-scale smart-city projects in Gwadar (Pakistan), Beijing Sub-center, and Comprehensive Transportation Hub of Beijing Sub-center Station. He completed his PhD under a joint programme between Dalian University of Technology and Cornell University, which was sponsored by the China Scholarship Council. He finished his post-doctoral research on the China-US geo-tech competition under a joint programme between Peking University and Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His areas of expertise include geo-tech competition, smart cities and ICT corporation strategy.