[1] In 1976, Lampton was an early American visitor to China as part of scientific exchanges between the two countries and people's diplomacy.

[2]: 76–80  Lampton was regarded as politically safe and viewed as a young expert on China's health care system.

Prior to 1988, Dr. Lampton was founding director of the China Policy Program at the American Enterprise Institute and associate professor of political science at Ohio State University where he started his academic career in 1974.

He is the author of The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (2008), which won Honorable Mention in the Asia Society’s Bernard Schwartz Book Award competition for 2009.

On February 27, 2014, Lampton was part of a panel discussion sponsored by the US-Asia Institute entitled "Sino-Japan Dynamics and Implications for The U.S.-Japan Alliance.