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 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. She is the author of the award-winning books How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016) and China’s Gilded Age (2020), both recommended by The Economist and recognized by prize committees across disciplines for “game-changing” and “field-shifting” ideas.

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. 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. In June 2026, she was named Wilmar Visiting Professor of Geoeconomics and Global Transformation at the National University of Singapore.

Global disruptions & paradigm shift: Ang argues that we cannot tackle 21st-century problems—defined by uncertainty, multipolarity, and technological disruption—using assumptions and paradigms inherited from the 20th-century. Rather than lamenting today’s disruptions as a paralyzing “polycrisis,” Ang reframes them as polytunity: a rare moment 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 innovation drive.

Recognition: Ang’s research has received awards across political science, sociology, and economics. She is the inaugural recipient of the Theda Skocpol Award from the American Political Science Association for “impactful empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions,” in addition to the Peter Katzenstein, Viviana Zelizer, Douglass North, and Alice Amsden prizes. Her research using LLMs 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 an online video lecture series based on her work, 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. 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.