Yuen Yuen Ang

Ang studies governance under complexity and how societies adapt, or fail to adapt, to disruptions—whether from China’s transformation, multipolarity, or AI.

Yuen Yuen Ang is the Alfred Chandler Chair Professor of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University. A central theme in Ang’s work is governance under complexity and how societies adapt, or fail to adapt, to disruptions—beginning with China’s capitalist revolution and extending to multipolarity and artificial intelligence. Winning awards across political science, economics, and sociology, her cross-disciplinary research is recognized by prize committees for advancing “game-changing” ideas. Her books How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016) and China’s Gilded Age (2020), are both recommended by The Economist. Bridging scholarship and public engagement, Ang is named among the world’s 100 Most Influential Academics in Government by Apolitical for “research with potential to steer the direction of government.” Ang serves as a Trustee of the Trust Principles of journalistic integrity at Reuters, the world’s largest multimedia news provider.

Follow her recent interviews & speaking at -

• World Economic Forum & Channel News Asia (Polycrisis to Polytunity: The Future of Geopolitics)

• World Peace Foundation (Polytunity & Agency in the Age of Disruption)

• U.S.-China Monitor by the Carter Center (Who Gets to Explain Development)

• ODI Global Advisory (Lead Change)

• Caixin (Can countries balance trade protectionism and integration?)

Appointments: At Johns Hopkins, Ang is the first named chair at the Center for Economy and Society, a multidisciplinary program established to find alternatives to traditional economic thinking. She is also appointed at the SNF Agora Institute for global democracy. Ang directs The Polytunity Project and The Multipolar Forum, where the latter convenes experts across sectors in Washington, D.C. to explore the rise of a multipolar era. In the summer of 2026, she was named Wilmar Visiting Professor of Geoeconomics and Global Transformation at the National University of Singapore. She also lectures annually at Schwarzman College in Tsinghua University.

Adapting to Global Disruptions: Ang argues that we cannot tackle 21st-century disruptions using paradigms inherited from the 20th-century. Rather than mourning the current moment as “polycrisis,” she reframes it as polytunity: a rare opening for deep transformation, beginning from how we see and think. Her response is AIM: Adaptive, Inclusive & Moral Political Economy—a system of thinking that centers complex systems (adaptive), pluralistic solutions (inclusive), and power awareness (moral). AIM formalizes ideas developed across Ang’s scholarship, and it continues to inform her analyses of the emerging world order, human-AI co-creation, and China’s economic paradox. The Glossary hosted on this website maps out the ideas generated from AIM.

Recognition: Ang is the inaugural recipient of the Theda Skocpol Award from the American Political Science Association for “impactful empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions” to comparative politics. She received the Peter Katzenstein (political economy), Viviana Zelizer (sociology), Douglass North (economics), and Alice Amsden (socio-economics) book prizes, along with the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship for “high-caliber research on pressing issues of our times.” More recently, her research using LLMs to study policy communication under complexity is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Teaching: An award-winning teacher, Ang teaches students how to think, and not simply what to think. Her recent courses include China and the World, From Polycrisis to Polytunity, and Directed Improvisation with AI. The Institute for New Economic Thinking produced a lecture series on her work, which has been viewed more than a million times. Rather than banning AI, Ang trains students to direct and co-create with AI in their work.

Media: Known for translating complex debates into accessible insights for global audiences, Ang has been interviewed by media across Asia, Europe, and North America, including CGTN Visionaries, Davos Radio, Die Zeit, Freakonomics Radio, and The Ezra Klein Show. She writes for premier outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Pengpai (China), Project Syndicate, and The New York Times