Dali L. Yang is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and the founding Faculty Director of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing. Professor Yang's current research interests include the politics of China's development, particularly regulation, governance, and state-society relations. Among his books are Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China (Stanford University Press, 2004); Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine (Stanford University Press, 1996); and most recently The Global Recession and China's Political Economy (Palgrave, 2012).

Yang received a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1993.