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You were recently selected as one of only three Chinese representatives to join the UN Women Global 100 Women Leaders Network — and the only Chinese member of its core working group. What are the biggest challenges you see standing in the way of gender equality today?

You’ve made the economic case for gender equality in rigorous, data-driven terms. Can you walk us through the argument?

Where does this commitment come from for you personally?

I’m part of the first generation in China to grow up under the One-Child Policy. In an unexpected way, that policy created an enormous window of opportunity: when families could only have one child, there was less room to discriminate. Girls had more equal access to education than they might have had otherwise, and that — combined with China’s rapid economic growth — gave my generation of women real chances.

But I also grew up in Qingdao, in Shandong Province, where Confucius was born. It’s a very traditional part of China. In some places, women still aren’t allowed at the dinner table — that space is reserved for men. I was educated in Sweden, one of the most gender-equal countries in the world, and at UC Berkeley, one of the most liberal academic environments. So I carry both of these realities inside me. I saw what equality could look like in practice. 

And then I have a daughter. That changes everything. I want to create a more gender-equal world for her and her generation.

As an economist, I only have one real tool — economics. So I’ve spent years writing on gender in top academic and media outlets, covering everything from education and labor markets to fertility, marriage, and divorce. When Harvard professor Claudia Goldin won the Nobel Prize in economics for her work on women in the labor market, it was a historic first for the field. By then, I had already written nearly 150,000 words on gender economics. The book almost wrote itself.

We are at a genuinely historic moment. I’m just trying to be part of it.

Your work on U.S.-China relations has spanned decades. You’ve spoken about trust as the critical variable. What does building genuine trust look like right now — and do you think it’s possible?

The world has never needed more collaboration than it does today — on AI, on climate, on space, on healthcare, on gender equality and many more. These challenges require the two largest economies to work together. But instead, we’re closing more doors than ever.

I have three hopes.

The first is the business community. As an economist, I believe in incentives. Businesses are incentivized to drive revenue and growth. They need access to markets, to talent, to technology. I’m hoping the business community on both sides can nudge governments to maintain some sanity and find ways to keep working together.

My second hope is in the younger generation and in social-level trust building. Many of the people who have the strongest assumptions about China have never been here. I receive global CEOs and heads of state who come to Beijing and are genuinely surprised to find that the air is clean, the food is extraordinary, and the people are warm. That’s not a policy argument — it’s a human one. Come. See for yourself.

My third hope is in the rest of the world — particularly the Global South. The U.S. and China are like two people in a difficult relationship who need a third voice. In physics, the triangle is the most stable shape. The Global South, rather than being forced to choose sides, has an opportunity to come together and say: enough. Find a way to work with each other.

You mentioned during a recent China Fellows reunion that a seminar reading on “willingness to be disturbed” stayed with you. How has the China Aspen Fellowship shaped the way you think about leadership?

I’m still in the middle of it — three seminars in, one more to go — but it’s already been profound. What makes it special is that everyone in the room has achieved something remarkable in their own field. And yet when we come together, none of that matters in the same way. We see each other as humans first. We share our struggles as readily as our accomplishments. There’s a quality of vulnerability there that I don’t often find elsewhere.

I had a moment at the end of one session that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. I was still searching for the right words to say at our closing, and one of my classmates turned to me and said simply, “Qian, we’ve got you.” That’s community. At the end of the day, we’re all humans together on this planet. We’re not enemies. There is no zero-sum game. If we can really hold onto that — across geographies, across ideologies, across genders, across all the lines that divide us — I think we can find our way forward.

As you look ahead, how do you define the impact you want to make?

I am passionate about two things, and I will not let go of either. One is being a bridge between China and the rest of the world. The other is advancing gender equality. Those are the two places where I believe I have something genuine to contribute — where my background, my training, and my lived experience all converge.

The exact form that takes is still being worked out. It could be through my advisory firm, Wusawa. It could be through writing — I’m considering translating my gender economics book into English, because the research draws on international data and should be accessible to women around the world. I’ve also been thinking about a book on China written for a global audience — most books on China written in English are written by outsiders looking in. I want to offer a different kind of window.

I’m still at my own inflection point, in some ways. But I am extremely grateful that the Fellowship is giving me exactly the space to figure that out.

About the Aspen Global Leadership Network

The Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN) is a dynamic, worldwide community of nearly 4,000 entrepreneurial leaders from over 60 countries. Spanning business, government, and the nonprofit sector, these leaders share a commitment to enlightened leadership and the drive to tackle the most pressing challenges of our times. Through transformative Fellowship programs and gatherings like the Resnick Aspen Action Forum, AGLN Fellows have the unique opportunity to connect, collaborate, and challenge each other to grow and commit to a lifelong journey of impact.

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