Harding’s previous positions include faculty appointments at Swarthmore College (1970-71) and Stanford University (1971-83), Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution (1983-94), Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University (1995-2005), and Director of Research and Analysis at Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting and advisory firm headquartered in New York (2005-07).  

A specialist on Asia, his major publications include The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know (co-edited with Francine Frankel, 2004); A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972 (1992), Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955: A Joint Reassessment of a Critical Debate (co-edited with Yuan Ming, 1989), China's Second Revolution: Reform After Mao (1987), China’s Foreign Relations in the 1980s (editor, 1984), and Organizing China: The Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949-1976 (1981).  

Harding also serves as Vice Chairman of the Asia Foundation, a member of the Board of Governors of the Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (Helsinki).

He received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and his MA and PhD from Stanford University.