Yasheng Huang
Yasheng Huang | |
|---|---|
黄亚生 | |
.jpg) Huang in 2025 | |
| Born | Beijing, China |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Education | Harvard University (BA, PhD) |
| Occupations | Author, professor |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Political science |
| Workplaces | |
| Thesis | The politics of inflation control in China: Provincial responses to central investment policies, 1977–1989 (1991) |
Yasheng Huang (Chinese: 黄亚生) is an American professor of international management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he holds the Epoch Foundation chair. His research focuses on human capital formation, political economy, and comparative development in China and India.
Early life and education
Huang was born in Beijing, China.[1] He later moved to the United States for higher education, attending Harvard University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Government in 1985 and a Doctor of Philosophy in Government in 1991.[2] His doctoral dissertation examined provincial responses to central investment policies during the reform era.[3]
Career
While completing his doctorate, Huang worked as a World Bank consultant and as an associate professor at the University of Michigan from 1987 to 1989. In 1997 he joined Harvard Business School as an associate professor in business, government, and international economics.[4] He joined the MIT Sloan School of Management as a faculty member in 2003, where he founded and directs the China Lab and India Lab.[5]
Huang is a member of the Task Force on U.S.–China Policy convened by the Asia Society's Center on U.S.–China Relations.[6] In March 2025 he joined the Center for China Analysis at Asia Society as a non-resident honorary senior fellow, focusing on the Chinese economy and technology.[7]
Research
Huang's scholarship examines the political economy of China and India, with particular attention to the role of foreign direct investment, financial liberalization, and human capital in development. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and academic journals in economics and management.
In a 2003 article for Foreign Policy, he and co-author Tarun Khanna analyzed the contrasting development strategies of China and India, arguing that India's homegrown entrepreneurship and stronger capital markets might allow it to catch up with or eventually surpass China, despite China's faster headline GDP growth and larger inflows of FDI.[8] In a 2024 reflection, Huang strongly defended the article, emphasizing that the original claims were widely misunderstood, downplaying the absence of a timeline for India surpassing China, and framing any errors as contingent on unforeseeable policy changes.[9]
His 2008 book Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics argued that rural entrepreneurship drove China's early economic growth, and that a subsequent shift toward urban, state-led capitalism undermined that progress.
His most recent book The Rise and Fall of the EAST (2023) offered a long-run historical account of how China's examination system, autocratic governance, and emphasis on stability shaped its economic trajectory.[10]
References
- ↑ "Biography, Yasheng Huang". mitsloan.mit.edu. Archived from the original on 24 May 2012. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
- ↑ "Yasheng Huang CV" (PDF). yashenghuang.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2025-04-24. Retrieved 2025-04-24.
- ↑ "The politics of inflation control in China: Provincial responses to central investment policies, 1977–1989". www.proquest.com. Retrieved 2025-04-24.
- ↑ "Bio". Retrieved 22 July 2012.
- ↑ "Huang Yasheng". MIT Sloan. Retrieved 2024-02-24.
- ↑ "The Task Force on U.S.-China Policy". Asia Society. Archived from the original on January 8, 2024. Retrieved 2024-01-29.
- ↑ "Yasheng Huang Joins Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis". asiasociety.org. 2025-03-14. Retrieved 2025-03-15.
- ↑ Huang, Yasheng; Khanna, Tarun (1 July 2003). "Can India Overtake China?". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 30 March 2026.
- ↑ Huang, Yasheng (12 March 2024). "Reflections on "Can India Overtake China?"". U.S.-China Perception Monitor. Retrieved 30 March 2026.
- ↑ Huang, Yasheng (17 May 2009). "China's rise relied on a rural miracle. So does its future". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 July 2012.