Yan Xuetong

Yán Xuétōng
阎学通
Yan in 2024
Born (1952-12-07) December 7, 1952
Tianjin, China
NationalityChinese
EducationPhD Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, 1992

MA International Politics, University of International Relations, 1986

BA English, Heilongjiang University, 1982
Occupation(s)Professor, dean
Political partyChinese Communist Party

Yan Xuetong (born 7 December 1952) is a Chinese political scientist and serves as a distinguished professor and dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University. Yan is one of the major Chinese figures in the study of international relations (IR). He is the founder of 'moral realism', a neoclassical realist theoretical paradigm in IR theory. His moral realist theory is based on political determinism.

In 2008, he was named as one of world's Top 100 Global Thinkers by the Foreign Policy. He is the only political scientist listed as Most Cited Chinese Researchers by Elsevier during 2014–2017.