Yuan Yang Keynote Speaker

FT's first Europe-China Correspondent
Co Founder of 'Rethinking Economics'
Author of 'Private Revolutions- Coming of Age in a New China'

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Yuan Yang's Biography

Yuan Yang, an economist, was the Financial Times’ first Europe-China correspondent* covering geopolitics, trade and supply chains, as well as writing a monthly column.

She previously spent six years in Beijing, where she was the FT’s deputy bureau chief and briefly ran the bureau during the pandemic. Before joining the FT, Yuan wrote about economics at The Economist, supported by the Marjorie Deane Financial Journalism Foundation.

Yuan is best known for narrative long-form writing that humanises complex economic issues, such as in this FT Magazine cover feature on the working conditions behind China’s tech boom; for investigations, such as on Chinese state surveillance over Hong Kong activists abroad; for delving into economic and industrial policy, such as in this analysis of the European solar power market

Yuan’s new book – ‘Private Revolutions‘ was published in May 2024 by Bloomsbury (UK) and Penguin Viking (US), on the rise and stumble of social mobility in China, told in a novelistic style through the stories of four Chinese millennial women, born during the reform era of the 1980s and 1990s as China pivoted towards capitalism. The individuals in her book represent the juncture between China’s patriarchal past, its authoritarian capitalist present, and the rumblings of a feminist future. Her view is that, if we are to understand how China will shape the 21st century, we must start with the stories of the people shaping the country’s new social order today. There was a four way auction to secure the rights to publish this book – Yuan has been described a new major talent.

She is the co-founder of ‘Rethinking Economics’, a charity that campaigns to make economics teaching more relevant to the 21st century. Yuan has also served as the Vice-President of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, defending press freedoms in the country, and has been a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service.

Yuan Yang was born in China, she moved with her parents to Yorkshire at the age of four. She has a degree in philosophy and economics from Oxford University and a master’s degree in economics from the London School of Economics.

*Yuan was elected as a Labour MP for Earley and Woodley in the 2024 UK Parliamentary elections, so she has stepped away from her previous role at the FT.