Speaker: Yang Yao (姚洋), Liberal Arts Chair Professor at the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) and the National School of Development (NSD), Peking University
Moderator: Daniel Vukovich, Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Friday, March 21, 2025
Time: 4:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Faculty Lounge (4.30), 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU
Political meritocracy guided China’s bureaucratic monarchy in the past and is still the main institution for the CCP’s personnel management today. The existing studies resort to history to defend it. In this talk, Professor Yang Yao, based on his book Good Governance: Insights from the Confucian State (coauthored with Zizhong Qin), will present his construction of a philosophical foundation for political meritocracy. For Confucians, human nature is diverse, fluid, and moldable, and it critically depends on one’s own perfection as to which stage of the sagehood one can achieve. In addition, hierarchies are necessary for state governance and higher positions need to be filled by people with higher levels of qualification. This approach enlarges the potential for political meritocracy to provide universal values for state governance in other parts of the world.
Yang Yao (姚洋) is a Liberal Arts Chair Professor at the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) and the National School of Development (NSD), Peking University. He currently serves as the editor of CCER’s house journal “China Economic Quarterly.” He was the dean of the NSD from November 2012 to January 2024. He chairs the China Economic Annual Conference, the Foundation of Modern Economics, and the supervision committee of CF40, and is a member of China Economist 50 Forum. His research interests include new political economy, economic transition and development in China and political philosophy. He has published more than a hundred research papers in international and domestic journals including China Social Sciences, the American Economic Review, and the American Political Science Review. He has published or edited more than a dozen books on political economy and philosophy, and economic development in China. He is also a prolific writer for magazines and newspapers, including the Financial Times and the Project Syndicate.
Professor Yao was awarded the 2008 and 2014 Sun Yefang Award in Economic Science, the 2008 and 2010 Pu Shan Award in International Economics, and the 2008 Zhang Peigang Award in Development Economics. He was named the Best Teacher by the PKU Student Union in 2006 and the Best Advisor by the PKU Graduate Students Union in 2017. He is a fellow of the International Economic Association (2024).
Professor Yao obtained a BS in geography in 1986 and an MS in economics in 1989, both from Peking University, and his PhD in development economics from the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1996.
This event is co-organised by the China, Humanities, and Global Studies (CHAGS) Cross-Faculty Research Hub and the School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, The University of Hong Kong.
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