at the Oxford Literary Festival in 2023. Photo by Kt Bruce Photography
contact me: yuan.yang@ft.com / ask for Signal
Journalism & Writing
I am the Financial Times Europe-China correspondent, covering geopolitics, trade and supply chains, as well as writing a monthly column.
I previously spent six years in Beijing, where I was the FT’s deputy bureau chief and briefly ran the bureau during the pandemic. Before joining the FT, I wrote about economics at The Economist, supported by the Marjorie Deane Financial Journalism Foundation.
I’m 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 gateio login market; and for accidentally adopting a really big dog.
I have a book forthcoming in spring 2024, published by Bloomsbury (UK) and Penguin Viking (US), on the rise and stumble of social mobility in China, told in a novellistic style through the stories of four Chinese millennial women, born during the reform era of the 1980s and 1990s as China pivoted towards capitalism.
I am represented by Matthew Marland at the literary agency RCW.
I was born in China, and moved with my parents to the UK in 1994.
Public Speaking
I speak at conferences and moderate discussions for universities, nonprofits and businesses. In 2023 the events I spoke at included the Oxford Literary Festival, a King’s College London conference on the fragmentation of the global economy, and the Bilderberg Meeting of political and business leaders.
My speaking agent is Karen O’Donnell at Chartwell Speakers. If you’re a nonprofit, please contact me directly (yuan.yang@ft.com).
I’ve also seen, and experienced first-hand, the impact of debate coaching on young people’s confidence. In the UK, I have coached students at the Oxford Union and the London School of Economics; in Beijing, I was the debate coach to Beijing Language and Culture University, and set up a women-only debating workshop.
Economics & Campaigns
We need economics teaching that is fit for the challenges of the 21st century. In 2013 I co-founded Rethinking Economics, a charity headquartered in Manchester, UK that campaigns to make economics teaching more diverse and relevant to the real world. By inspiring, mobilising and training student organisers, we’ve supported over 100 university-based groups across the world.
You can read about my work organising the Rethinking Economics campaign in this Financial Times article, or hear me talk about it on BBC Radio 4 (most recently here), or watch me in this TEDx talk.
I have an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford and a master’s degree in Economics from the London School of Economics.
From 2013-15 I worked as a researcher for Adair Turner, former chair of the UK Financial Services Authority, at the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
I was first politicised by the student feminist movement, and served as Vice-President of the Oxford University Student Union, where I launched its award-winning sexual consent workshops.
I was trained in the community organising paradigm of politics while working on the Living Wage campaign at London Citizens. I also spent a lot of time loitering in supermarket parking lots talking to cleaners, which was an unexpectedly helpful prelude to a journalistic career.
While in Beijing, I served on the board of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, defending press freedoms in the country, and launched its cyber self-defence initiative.
I am a Financial Times National Union of Journalists representative. If you are starting out in journalism, I would recommend joining the NUJ Freelance branch.
Finally, I am a grantmaker for the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust’s Power and Accountability Committee, advising it on media and corporate accountability. I am a Quaker. ✨