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 artificial intelligence.

Yuen Yuen Ang is the Alfred Chandler Chair Professor of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University. A central theme in Ang’s work is how societies adapt, or fail to adapt, to disruptions—beginning in the context of China’s capitalist revolution and extending to multipolarity and artificial intelligence.

Appointments: Ang is the first named chair at the Center for Economy and Society, a multidisciplinary program established to find alternatives to traditional economic thinking. Her professorship is named after American economic historian Alfred Chandler, who pioneered the study of corporate capitalism. She is also a faculty member at the SNF Agora Institute, dedicated to strengthening global democracy. Beyond academia, Ang serves as a Trustee of the Trust Principles of journalistic integrity at Reuters, the world’s largest multimedia news provider.

Polytunity: While establishment elites lament the “polycrisis” as a source of fear and paralysis, Ang flips the frame, reframing the current moment as polytunity—a once-in-a-generation opening for deep transformation of global institutions and thought. Ang’s perspective is not optimism—but realism: true renewal is only possible when the old order breaks down.

AIM Paradigm: To navigate this moment of polytunity, Ang introduces AIM (Adaptive, Inclusive & Moral Political Economy), a way of thinking that centers complex systems (Adaptive), pluralistic pathways (Inclusive), and power awareness (Moral). AIM is not a static “framework,” but a paradigm that reorients underlying assumptions and values—generating new questions, methods, and solutions, as mapped in the AIM Glossary hosted on this website.

Origins & evolution: AIM formalizes the system of ideas developed across Ang’s scholarship, especially her award-winning books, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016) and China’s Gilded Age (2020). Her recent work extends AIM to interpret the emerging world order, human-AI co-creation, and China’s state-led innovation drive.

Recognition: Ang’s cross-disciplinary research has received awards across political science, sociology, and economics. She is the inaugural recipient of the Theda Skocpol Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association for “impactful empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions.” Prize committees recognize her work as “game-changing” and “field-shifting.” Her research applying AIM to adaptive policy communication, using LLMs (large language models), 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 (INET) produced a seven-episode video lecture series based on her books, which has attracted over a million views. Rather than “banning AI,” Ang actively trains students to direct and co-create with AI in their work.

Public impact: Bridging scholarship and policymaking, Ang has been named among the world’s 100 Most Influential Academics in Government by Apolitical for “research with potential to steer the direction of government.” At Johns Hopkins, Ang directs The Polytunity Project and The Multipolar World & U.S.–China Forum. One objective of Polytunity is to equip college students with an essential civic skill in the twenty-first century: interpreting global disruption with agency—not just anxiety—and communicating their ideas publicly (see Polytunity: The Gen-Z Series). The Multipolar Forum convenes experts across sectors in Washington, D.C. to explore U.S.–China relations in a tech-disrupted, multipolar era.

Media: Known for translating complex debates into accessible insights for global audiences, Ang has been profiled by media across Asia, Europe, and North America, including CGTN Visionaries, 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.

For updates, follow her on LinkedIn or Polytunity (Substack).