Join author Ning Leng, Assistant Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, in conversation with Yeling Tan, Professor of Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, to discuss her new book Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China.

In Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China, Professor Ning Leng offers an in-depth examination of the relationship between the Chinese government and Chinese firms, both private and state-owned. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and original datasets from two sectors in China, Professor Ning Leng introduces two political services that the Chinese state demands from companies: visibility projects, a common distortion of economic policies and infrastructure politics to advance government officials’ careers, and societal control, through which firms assist the state in pushing forward controversial projects. One unexpected consequence of this politicisations of business is the gradual retreat of China’s private sector—sometimes voluntary, at other times coerced.

The book offers a fresh revisit of China's political economy and sheds light on the political incentives shaping Chinese firms’ investment behavior.

Please note that this event takes place in person only.

Ning Leng is an Assistant Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University. Dr Leng specialises in the political economy of China and Global China. Her work on domestic China includes her first book Politicizing Business (Cambridge University Press, 2025) which shows how the Chinese state routinely solicits political services from companies and what it demands from business. She has also published on the motivations, methods, and outcomes of state control over firms, academics, and government officials.

Her work on Global China includes articles on public opinion of China and China’s legal influence in the Global South. She is currently working on a second book exploring the relationships between Chinese companies, the Chinese government, and host country governments in South America. Dr Leng received her PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and was a postdoc at Harvard University's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. She is a Wilson China Fellow for the year of 2025-2026.