Weiying Zhang

Weiying Zhang is currently a Senior Professor of Economics at the National School of Development at Peking University, a Peking University Boya Distinguished Professor (Emeritus), a Tsientang Scholar at the Tsientang Institute for Advanced Study, Director of the Tsientang Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the Chief Academic Supervisor of New Village Academy, and Chief Economist of the Yabuli China Entrepreneurs Forum. He received a bachelor's degree in 1982 and a master's degree in 1984 in economics from Northwest University, and. joined the China Economic System Reform Research Institute in 1984, where he was actively involved in research on China's economic reform policies. After receiving his PhD in economics from Oxford University in 1994, he joined Peking University and co-founded the Peking University China Center for Economic Research （renamed as the National School of Development in 2008）. He served as Dean of the Guanghua School of Management from 2006 to 2010 and the Assistant President of Peking University from 2002 to 2008. Over the last four decades, his research focused on entrepreneurship and marketization of the Chinese economy, and through numerous articles, papers and books, he has almost single-handedly changed the public image of entrepreneur in China. He was awarded the China Economic Theory Innovation Award in 2011 for his 1984 proposal of “dual-track price reform”. In 2023, he was elected a Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Management. In 2025, he received an honorary doctorate from the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong and was elected a Fellow of the UK/European Chinese Economic Association. His book The Logic of the Market was a finalist for the Hayek Prize in 2016 and 2017, and his book Re-Understanding Entrepreneurship was a finalist for the 2025 Hayek Prize.