Professor Yao Amber Li is currently an Associate Professor of Economics in School of Business and Management, the Associate Director of Center for Economic Development and Faculty Associate of the Institute for Emerging Market Studies (IEMS) at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). She has been serving as Vice-chairperson of the Standing Committee of CTRG (China Trade Research Group) since 2019 and Joint Secretary-General of the Secretariat of the Quality Alliance at Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau University Alliance since 2020. Her major fields are international trade, international macroeconomics, Chinese economy, and development. Her research interests include knowledge diffusion, technology transfer, quality upgrading, multinational firms and FDI, firm competitiveness, and economic geography. Her recent work has focused on understanding the frictions in knowledge diffusion and the strategic responses of firms to external shocks (e.g., trade liberalisation and exchange rate shocks), especially in emerging economies such as China and India. She worked as a research fellow in Planning Research Institute, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (previously, Ministry of Information Industry) of China between 2003 and 2005. She has participated in a series of China’s national research projects. She was one of the main framers and revisers of several China’s national industrial policies (digital TV, integrated circuits, software, etc.), and major policies regarding FDI, exporting, industrial agglomeration and economic development zones for Chinese government. During her PhD study, she joined several research projects sponsored by a national think-tanker, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI, Canada). She holds a BA (2001) and an MA (2003) in Economics from Peking University (P.R. China) and a PhD (2010) in Economics from University of Western Ontario (UWO, Canada).