Yuen Yuen Ang

Yuen Yuen Ang is the Alfred Chandler Chair Professor of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University. She is a faculty at the Center for Economy and Society (CES), SNF Agora Institute, and Department of Political Science. She is the first named chair at CES, a multi-disciplinary program established to find “alternatives to traditional economic thinking.”  

Through her scholarship and public engagement, Ang’s work opens new ways of thinking for a disrupted, multipolar world. Her award-winning books, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016) and China’s Gilded Age (2020), have shaped debates on political economy, development, and China’s role in the world. Formalizing the system of ideas, methods, and applications developed across her scholarship, Ang advances AIM (Adaptive, Inclusive, and Moral) Political Economy as a paradigm for navigating today’s global disruptions—what she frames as a polytunity for deep transformation rather than just as a polycrisis.  

Named among the world’s 100 Most Influential Academics in Government by Apolitical, Ang is recognized for “research that resonates with policymakers and has the potential to steer the direction of government.” At Johns Hopkins University, she directs The Polytunity Project and The Multipolar World & U.S.–China Roundtables, which convene experts across sectors in Washington, D.C. to explore U.S-China relations in a tech-disrupted, multipolar era. She also serves as a Trustee of the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company, overseeing the Trust Principles of journalistic independence and integrity at Reuters.

Frequently invited as a speaker on global trends and China’s place in them, Ang has spoken at forums across the world and across professions, with recent speeches or remarks delivered at the Development Leadership Dialogue at SOAS, Development Studies Association, IMF, UNDP, U.S.-China Business Council, and the World Economic Forum (Summer Davos).

To learn more about Ang’s work, visit her website: https://www.yuenyuenang.org.

Profiles: LinkedIn | 10th Anniversary Series of How China Escaped the Poverty Trap