About - YANG Cheng

Cheng Yang 楊成 is the winner of the 19th World Economic History Congress IEHA Best PhD Dissertation Prize (Paris, 2022) and the winner of the Economic History Society’s New Researcher Award (Belfast, 2019). He completed his MPhil in economic and social history between 2014 and 2015 and PhD in history in 2015–19 under the supervision of Prof. Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Prof. Hans van de Ven, Prof. Paul Warde, and the late Prof. Sir Tony Wrigley. He is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of China’s Economic Reform and Development and the School of Economics, Renmin University of China 中国人民大学中国经济改革与发展研究院、 经济学院, and also a long term affiliate of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. Trained as a cultural heritage conservationist and preservation architect, he then was drawn to the debate on Great Divergence and the study of long-run economic development of China. His main interest is the investigation into the economic development in 18th–19th century China from the perspective of living standard and occupation structure based on gazetteer books and criminal records. His main publications include in particular “A New Estimate of Chinese Male Occupational Structure during 1734–1898 by Sector, Sub‐sector Pattern, and Region” (2022).