Yuan Yang (politician)

Yuan Yang (born 1990 ) is a British-Chinese Labour Party politician and journalist. She has served as a Member of Parliament for Earley and Woodley since July 2024. She was formerly the UK-based Europe-China correspondent for the Financial Times. Yuan is the first Chinese-born British citizen to be elected to the UK Parliament, and the second of Chinese ethnicity after Alan Mak.

Early life and education
Yang was born in China, growing up in Sichuan in the southwest of the country. She was raised by her maternal grandparents in a work unit (danwei). At the age of four, she moved to the north of England with her parents - moving between Manchester and Leeds. Yang became "very passionate about writing" as a child, and explained that her passion was "encouraged by my teachers and by a group called The Yorkshire Writing Squad that I joined as a teenager".

Yang was educated at the fee-paying Bradford Grammar School, graduating in 2008. Yang studied for a bachelor's degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 2011 with first-class honours. She was the sabbatical Women’s Officer in the Oxford Student Union.

In 2008 amid the 2007–2008 financial crisis, she co-founded Rethinking Economics, a non-profit campaign that Yang described as coming from the belief that "students should be able to choose among different schools of thought" with regards to economics education. Yang expressed the hope that the campaign would provide a space for students wanting to address "real world economic issues, broader questions of economic justice and reforming the real economy."

Yang attended the London School of Economics from 2012-2013, studying for an MSc in Economics. Yang studied abroad at Peking University in 2013 as part of a government sponsored programme.

Journalism career
In a 2021 interview with Quartz, Yang noted that she initially intended to become a poet but pivoted to journalism by accident.

She began her journalism career as a Marjorie Dean intern in the economics section of The Economist magazine.

In 2016, she returned to China as an economics correspondent for the Financial Times. She has served as deputy Beijing bureau chief for the FT, and covered China's technology sector and economy. Yang is also a regular contributor to BBC News.

In May 2024, Yang's book Private Revolutions was published by Bloomsbury Publishing. The book is about the coming of age of four women born in China in the 1980s and 1990s, in a society about to change beyond recognition.

Political career
In December 2023, Yang was announced as the Labour Party candidate for Earley and Woodley in the 2024 general election. Her family had lived in the area for 14 years prior to her selection as a candidate. Yang explained that part of her motivation for standing as a candidate derived from witnessing "the damage austerity has done to our community" in the area.

In July 2024, she won the newly created constituency with 18,209 votes, beating the Conservative party candidate who received 17,361 votes, and becoming the UK's first Chinese-born MP. Before she was an MP, Yang backed the rights of Hongkongers in the United Kingdom and was critical of the Chinese government's 2020 Hong Kong national security law.

Yang is a Quaker, she was sworn in by taking a solemn affirmation on 10 July.