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Shirley Ze Yu
Political Economist, Senior Visiting Fellow & Director China-Africa Initiative
@ The London School of Economics and Political Science
TIME:
02/07 @ 10:00 AM
DURATION:
40 MIN
LOCATION:
MAIN STAGE
LANGUAGE:
ENGLISH
Professor Shirley Ze Yu is a distinguished expert in China’s political economy. She serves as Director of the China-Africa Initiative at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at the London School of Economics (LSE) and has served as a Senior Practitioner Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School (2018-24). Additionally, she holds faculty appointments as a professor at the IE Business School and as an Honorary Distinguished Foreign Faculty Professor at the National Defence University in Islamabad.
Shirley Ze Yu is a member of the Davos Expert Network, specializing in China and geo-economics. Her insights have been featured in influential publications, including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and South China Morning Post. As a frequent commentator on global issues, she regularly contributes to leading news platforms such as the BBC, Bloomberg, and Al Jazeera.
Yu is a sought-after speaker at premier think tanks and research institutions worldwide, including Chatham House, Asia Society, Harvard University, Cambridge University, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics.
She serves on the boards of international companies, bringing extensive expertise to advising Fortune Global 100 corporations and multilateral institutions on the strategic and economic dimensions of China’s evolving economy, public policy, and techno-geopolitics.
She holds a Ph.D. in political economy from Peking University and a Master’s degree from Harvard University. She remains deeply engaged with global stakeholders on the far-reaching impacts of China’s ascent on the world stage.
- Two Decades of Strategic Transformation: China’s transition from labor-intensive manufacturing to an innovation-led economy was driven by state industrial policies, fierce domestic market competition, a massive STEM talent pipeline, and a permissive approach to technological ethics that allowed rapid experimentation Western regulators would have slowed.
- China’s Advance to the Global Industrial Frontier in This Decade: The 2020s are China’s most aggressive phase yet – with frontier advances in AI, robotics, EVs, quantum computing, and space now bearing fruit at scale, reshaping global assumptions about who leads innovation.
- Implications for Global Trade: China no longer competes at the bottom of the value chain. Its high-technology exports are disrupting global markets, re-defining global trade routes, and global payment architecture.
- US-China Rivalry and Europe’s Dilemma: Technology competition between Washington and Beijing has hardened into structural rivalry. Europe, economically tied to China yet allied with the U.S., faces an uncomfortable choice between decoupling, strategic autonomy, or irrelevance.
- A Transforming Global Order: China’s rise is accelerating multipolarity. For the Global South, it offers an alternative development model. For Western democracies, the deeper contest is over whose values and standards govern the technologies defining this century
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