Yanzhong Huang

Senior Fellow for Global Health

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Toxic Politics

October 15, 2020
book cover with image of soldiers marching in polluted air

Expert Bio

Yanzhong Huang is a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directs the Global Health Governance roundtable series. He is also a professor and director of global health studies at Seton Hall University's School of Diplomacy and International Relations, where he developed the first academic concentration among U.S. professional international affairs schools that explicitly addresses the security and foreign policy aspects of health issues. He is the founding editor of Global Health Governance: The Scholarly Journal for the New Health Security Paradigm.  

Dr. Huang’s expertise includes Chinese health politics, global health security, and US-China relations. He is the author of Governing Health in Contemporary China (2013),  Toxic Politics: China’s Environmental Health Crisis and Its Challenge to the Chinese State (2020), and The COVID-19 Pandemic and China’s Global Health Leadership (2022). His research has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, American Journal of Public Health, as well as in peer-reviewed academic publications such as The China Journal and Health Security.  In 2006, he coauthored the first scholarly article that systematically examined China’s soft power.     

Dr. Huang has testified before U.S. congressional committees multiple times and is regularly consulted by major media outlets, the private sector, and governmental and nongovernmental organizations on global health issues and China. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and a member of the CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security. In 2012, InsideJersey listed him as one of the “20 Brainiest People in New Jersey.” He previously was a research associate at the National Asia Research Program, a public intellectuals fellow at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, an associate fellow at the Asia Society, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore, and a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has taught at Barnard College and Columbia University. He obtained his BA and MA from Fudan University and his PhD from the University of Chicago.

affiliations

  • American Journal of Bioterrorism, Biosecurity, and Biodefense, editorial board
  • Center for China and Globalization, academic advisor
  • CSIS Commission on Strengthening America's Health Security, expert and co-chair of China working group
  • Institute of Global Health (Georgia), board member
  • Journal of Global Health Governance, founding editor
  • Schwarzman College/Tsinghua University, guest lecturer       
  • Seton Hall University School of Diplomacy and International Relations, professor
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