Yuen Yuen Ang is a Singaporean professor of political science who is currently the Alfred Chandler Chair of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of two books: How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016), named one of the "Best Books of 2017" by Foreign Affairs, and China's Gilded Age (2020).
Ang was born in Singapore. She studied at Colorado College and received a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University in 2010.
Ang was an assistant professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University in 2010âÂÂ2011, and in 2011 became an associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan. On 12 January 2023, she became the first newly named professor at the Center for Economy and Society (CES) and the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
She is also active in public policy debates, and her opinion columns have been published in Foreign Affairs and Project Syndicate, among others. She has been interviewed on Freakonomics Radio and the Ezra Klein Show, among other outlets.
In 2023, Ang was appointed Alfred Chandler Chair of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University.
Ang's first book, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, won the Peter Katzenstein and Viviana Zelizer book prizes and was named among the "Best of Books" by Foreign Affairs. In a review published by the London School of Economics, Duncan Green wrote that "its lessons apply far beyond China's borders".
In China's Gilded Age (2020), Ang compares present-day China with 19th-century America, challenging assumptions of Chinese exceptionalism.