Cheng Enjiang is a program officer in the foundation’s Beijing office, developing programming focused on the impact of Chinese development finance in the Global South. Before joining the foundation in 2016, he was an associate professor at the Victoria Institute of Strategic Economic Studies at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia, where he focused on China’s economic structural change, poverty reduction, and rural finance. Earlier, he served as fellow and chief research coordinator at the International Poverty Reduction Center of China and then spent a year as senior China economist at Citibank in China.

Over the past 25 years, Enjiang’s research and project work has focused on the ways in which finance—for instance, microfinance, village funds, micro- and small-enterprise, and agricultural value chain development—can be used to alleviate poverty and create employment opportunity. Through his work on China’s economic transformation, such as on rural-to-urban migration and rural-urban linkages, he has built partnerships among academic researchers and the private sector, particularly the financial sector. He also has extensive experience working with donors, community-based organizations, and a variety of research institutes.

Enjiang earned a PhD in agricultural economics from the University of Melbourne and a bachelor’s degree in the same field from China’s Nanjing Agricultural University.