Asia Scholars Program

Overview

The Asia Scholars Program provides new joint appointments across the Faculty of Arts, targeting outstanding scholars from the Asia region. The Program builds the Faculty’s research, teaching, and engagement profile through collaborative research projects and joint publications with scholars from the best universities in the Asia region.

The Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies has hosted three Asia Scholars: Professor Yao Yang (Peking University), Professor Martin K. Whyte (Harvard University), and Professor Zhu Ling (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences). Yao Yang was at the Centre from mid-July to August 2017, after short visits in 2015 and 2016, strengthening the collaboration between the Centre and Peking University’s National School of Development on China’s economic transition and development. Martin Whyte joined the Centre (and the School of Social and Political Sciences) for three months in 2017 (February to May), continuing in 2018 and 2019 by contributing to teaching and collaborative research on the sociology of contemporary China. Zhu Ling was at the Centre for short visits in 2017, 2018, and 2019, contributing to the Centre’s research on agricultural development and poverty alleviation and taught several Masters-level subjects on contemporary China.

Professor Zhu Ling

Past Asia Scholar

Professor Zhu Ling
Professor Zhu Ling

Professor Zhu Ling is a Member of the Academy and former Deputy Director of the Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. She sits on several policy advisory committees of the State Council, including the Advisory Committee to the Leading Group for Poverty Reduction (since 2010) and the Theoretical Economics Group of the Academic Degrees Committee (2003-2013). She has also held advisory positions in international development agencies: eg since 2011 she has been a Board member of UN University-WIDER and was a member of the Board of Trustees for the International Food Policy Research Institute (2006-2012).

Her research interests are in economic development, especially rural development, poverty, and social protection in China. Since 2013 she has authored or co-authored six books and numerous articles, including Food Security and Social Protection for the Rural Poor in China (Routledge, 2017), and Removing Obstacles for the Development of Farmers and Herders: Case Studies from the Eastern Tibetan Plateau (Social Sciences Academic Press, 2014).

Professor Martin K Whyte

Past Asia Scholar

Professor Martin K Whyte
Professor Martin K Whyte

Martin King Whyte is John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and Sociology Emeritus and faculty associate of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. He received his BA (in physics) from Cornell University and MA (in Russian studies) and PhD degrees (in sociology) from Harvard. He taught at the University of Michigan from 1970 to 1994, at George Washington University from 1994 to 2000, and returned to Harvard as a faculty member in 2000. He specialises in the study of grassroots social organisation and social change in the PRC in both the Mao and reform eras.

He has two published books reflecting his ongoing research on inequality patterns and trends in China: One Country, Two Societies: Rural-Urban Inequality in Contemporary China (editor, Harvard University Press, 2010) and Myth of the Social Volcano: Perceptions of Inequality and Distributive Injustice in Contemporary China (Stanford University Press, 2010). He has also published studies on China’s economic development patterns, continuity and change in Chinese family life, changing village and city social patterns, gender relations, and demographic and health trends, as well as on comparisons of the post-socialist transitions in China and Eastern Europe.

Professor Yao Yang

Past Asia Scholar

Professor Yao Yang
Professor Yao Yang

Yao Yang is Professor at the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) and the National School of Development (NSD), Peking University. He also serves as Director of CCER and Dean of NSD and is a member of the China Finance 40 Forum. His research interests include economic transition and development in China. He has published dozens of research papers in international and domestic journals as well as several books on institutional economics and economic development in China. He is a prolific writer for magazines and newspapers, including the Financial Times and the Project Syndicate.