Professor Yuan Ming was originally trained as a student of western language and literature at Peking University. Prior to her graduate work, she spent eight years in the rural areas in Northwest China. China’s Reform and Open Door policy opens the opportunities for her to accomplish the graduate work in the Law Department of Peking University and then to visit these distinguished institutions abroad. She was a visiting scholar at U.C. Berkeley from 1983 to 1985; a Senior Associate Member at the St. Antony’s College in Oxford University from 1989 to 1990. Since 1995, she was invited and did research at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia; the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. She travels a lot and is a frequent speaker at many international gatherings such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Trilateral Commission, the Club of Rome, etc.

Professor Yuan Ming teaches the History of International Relations, Western Classics of International Relations at Peking University. She is also the Vice-Dean of the School of International Studies, the Director of the Center for American Studies at the University. Her publication includes Cross Century Assignment: the International Relations Studies in China; A History of International Relations ( 1648-1989), which is one of the leading publication and textbook in China. She is also the co-editor of Sino-American Relations (1945-1955); the Golden Age of U.S.-China-Japan Relations.

Professor Yuan Ming has organized many international conferences in China, and has wide links in Asia, North America, Europe and Oceania.

Professor Yuan Ming is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a member of the CPPCC’s Foreign Relations Committee. She sits on the boards of numbers of institutions in China. She was also the Trustee of the Asia Society in New York (1998-2004). In 2004, she joined the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.