Dali L. Yang is the William Claude Reavis Professor in the Department of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago. His research is on the politics of China’s development, governance, and global impact. He is the author of Wuhan: How the Covid-19 Outbreak in China Spiraled Out of Control (Oxford University Press, 2024).

His other books include Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine (Stanford University Press, 1996), a path-breaking book in historical political economy, as well as Beyond Beijing: Liberalization and the Regions in China (Routledge, 1997), Remaking the Chinese Leviathan:  Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China (Stanford University Press, 2004), and Child and Youth Well-being in China (co-author; Routledge, 2019).  He is also editor or co-editor of several other volumes, including The Global Recession and China’s Political Economy (Palgrave, 2012). His articles have also dealt with China’s regulation, environmental governance, social and political trust, and state-society relations. Through collaborative research, he also continues his long-standing interest in the political economy of the Great Leap Famine (1959-1961).

Professor Yang served in a number of academic leadership roles. Between 2010 and June 2016, he was 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. He’s reprising this role during the 2025-2026 academic year. He had also served as 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 served as Senior Advisor to the President and the Provost on Global Initiatives (2016-2025). 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.

Professor Yang is active in the greater Chicago community. He is a Faculty Fellow of the Center for International Social Science Research, the University of Chicago, 2024-2025. He is also non-resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and contributed to the Chicago Council report The United States and the Rise of China and India (2006). He is on the Advisory Board of the Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago and a member of the Chicago Sister Cities Committee. He is also a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and engaged in research collaboration through his directorship of the Institute of Governance at Shandong University in Qingdao. Professor Yang has served on the editorial boards of leading journals in political science and China studies.

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