Executive Director
Matej Šimalčík is the Executive Director of the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, a think tank that focuses on foreign and security policy issues related to East Asia. Matej's research looks at China’s economic and political presence and influence in Central Europe, elite relations, corrosive capital, and the role of European legal instruments in mitigating risks posed by China. In 2022, he founded the China-Europe Academic Engagement Tracker project, which aims to bring transparency to research collaborations with Chinese entities. He has a background in Law (Masaryk University, 2015) and International Relations (University of Groningen, 2016). Matej gained practical legal experience as an in-house legal counsel for the Slovak branch of Transparency International, a global anti-corruption watchdog, and several Slovak and Czech law firms. In 2021, he was listed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list (Slovak edition) in the Governance and Social Innovation category. He is also a member of the Expert Pool at the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), and the European Think-tank Network on China. In 2025, he became a visiting fellow at the Institute of National Defense and Security Research (INDSR) in Taipei under the Taiwan Fellowship program. Research interests: EU-China relations, EU-Taiwan relations, hybrid threats, corrosive capital, law and legal resilience
Written Articles
