BEN SIMPFENDORFER is currently the Chief China Economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong and was previously the Senior China economist at JPMorgan in Hong Kong. He has lived in Beijing, Beirut, Damascus, and Hong Kong where he writes for the foreign business and investment community. He appears regularly on Bloomberg and CNBC and is quoted in such major publications as the Financial Times and The New York Times. Simpfendorfer speaks Arabic and Chinese and has spent fifteen years reading local newspapers, speaking with the everyday person on the streets of Beirut to Beijing, and assessing economic data from the two regions. He has immersed himself in the two cultures and has personally observed many of the watershed events that have unfolded in the Arab world and China during that time.