Dali L. Yang

About Dali L. Yang

Dali L. Yang is a non-resident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He is the William Claude Reavis Professor in the department of political science at the University of Chicago. He is the founding faculty director of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing, a university-wide initiative to promote collaboration and exchange between UChicago scholars and students and their Chinese counterparts.

Yang's research is focused on the politics of China's development. His current projects include studies of social regulation, environmental governance, social and political trust, and state-society relations. He also continues to examine the political economy of the Great Leap Famine (1959-1961), the worst in human history. Among his books are Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China (Stanford University Press, 2004); Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine (Stanford University Press, 1996); and Beyond Beijing: Liberalization and the Regions in China (Routledge, 1997). He is also editor or co-editor of several other volumes, most recently The Global Recession and China's Political Economy (Palgrave, 2012). A contributor to The United States and the Rise of China and India, by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, his recent articles have appeared in the International Political Science Review, Journal of Contemporary China, and Political Studies.

Yang has previously served in a number of other academic leadership roles. He was chairman of the political science department, director of The Center for East Asian Studies, and director of the Committee on International Relations of the University of Chicago. He also previously served as director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore and director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Chicago.

Yang is a member of the Committee of 100, a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and a member of the China Committee of the Chicago Sister Cities International Program. He is also on the advisory board of the Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago. He is a frequent public speaker and has been a member and contributor to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs report The United States and the Rise of China and India (2006). Yang has served on the editorial boards of leading journals in political science and China studies. He has been a co-director of the University of Chicago Workshop on East Asia: Politics, Economy, and Society.

An engineering graduate from Beijing Science and Technology University, Yang received his PhD in political science from Princeton University. He joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1992.