The Mean in Budgeting: Insights from Chinese Confucian Principles

Yannan Gou is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Professor, and Doctoral Supervisor at Shanghai University. He sits on the Ministry of Finance Expert Panel and serves as the Deputy Director of the Performance Management Committee of the China Society of Finance. He advises on major financial decision-making for the Shanghai municipal government and serves as the Director of the Public Budget and Financial Management Research Center. He has authored several monographs, including The Mean in Budgeting, Budget Decision: Modern Perspectives, and Performance Budgeting: Models and Paths. He has translated over ten monographs in public budgeting and financial management, such as Public Finance in Theory and Practice, The Capacity to Budget, Public Budgeting Systems, Congress and Money, The Federal Budget, The New Politics of the Budgetary Process, Fiscal Administration Analysis and Applications for The Public Sector, and The Fiscal Revolution in America. Gou has long provided decision-making consultation and reform solutions in public budgeting and financial management for the Ministry of Finance and various government departments.

Beyond his professional scholarship, Professor Gou has cultivated significant expertise in traditional Chinese cultural arts. His four-decade practice of calligraphy has achieved professional recognition, with his representative work Purity being exhibited at the prestigious ＂Invitational Exhibition of Centennial Calligraphy and Painting Masters＂. As a scholar of classical Chinese literature, he served as editorial director for the republication of Zeng Guofan’s Selected Poems of Eighteen Masters, an important Qing dynasty poetic anthology. His scholarly contributions extend to tea culture studies, evidenced by his editorial roles in publishing Tea Language and Songs and The Book of Chinese Tea.