Shirley Ze Yu

Shirley Ze Yu

Visiting Senior Fellow

Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa

Languages
English, Mandarin
Key Expertise
political economy, business, trade

About me

Professor Shirley Yu is Senior Practitioner Fellow with the Ash Center of Harvard Kennedy School, a Professor at the IE Business School and a distinguished foreign faculty Professor at the National Defence University, Pakistan. At the LSE Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa, Dr Yu is Visiting Senior Fellow, where she is Director of the China-Africa initiative.

Additionally, Yu is the creator of a daily intelligence and insights newsletter on China for Fortune Global 500 stakeholders - China BIG Idea - and a NY-based business talk show Hey China!, as well as a frequent commentator and contributor on the BBC News, Bloomberg, CNN, Al Jazeera, PBS Frontline, S&P Global and Channel News Asia on China. She is a column contributor to the Financial Times and the National News, among others, and a South China Morning Post Expert.

Shirley Yu is also a Davos World Economic Forum Expert on China, 5G and geo-economics and has been the keynote speaker at leading global think tanks including Chatham House, Asia Society, Cambridge University, Harvard Kennedy School and the LSE, among others, and was previously the deputy director of the Xin Fintech Center at the Tsinghua PBoC School of Finance, leading research on China’s fintech innovations. She is an author of the Palgrave Macmillan 2020 book Huawei Goes Global: Made in China for the World, and she has published books in Chinese, including On China, by Ambassadors, and The Rise of the RMB and the Fall of the Yen. She has a Ph.D. in political economy from China’s Peking University, and a Master’s degree from Harvard University.

Visit Shirley Yu's website.

Expertise Details

political economy; business; trade