Felix Chang, Robert J. Watkins/Procter & Gamble Professor of Law in Moritz College of Law, has been awarded a 2025-2026 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to Singapore to research “The Global Race to Manage China’s Private Wealth: A Case Study of Singapore.”
Chang’s FLEX grant will allow to do research for the next two years. He will be affiliated with the Yong Pung How School of Law at the Singapore Management University.
“This project examines the laws and institutions that have transformed Singapore into a significant wealth hub. I will conduct a longitudinal study of trends in Singapore’s trust and corporate laws over a two-year period to observe their interplay with wealth influxes from China, as well as their effects on the internationalization of China’s currency, the renminbi,” said Chang.
“I will collaborate with Singapore Management University to interview attorneys representing family offices. In addition, I will collect laws and currency statistics, attend court proceedings, gather marketing materials and interview regulators.”
An expert on antitrust, financial regulation, and trusts and estates, Chang’s research focuses on the ability of infrastructures to suppress competition in the financial markets as well as the relationship between inheritance law and wealth inequality.
He hopes the Fulbright project with improve the understanding of law and economics in real world scenarios. “I hope to deepen my institutional ties with law schools in Asia while learning more about how private wealth moves and how currencies compete. The literature on trust law, wealth flows and currency competition are often theoretical, but through my observations of how change unfolds on the ground, I hope to enrich our understanding of both law and economics in action.”
This Fulbright is part of a larger project on the jurisdictional competition between Singapore and Hong Kong to manage private Chinese wealth. Chang received a grant from the Mershon Center for International Security Studies to support the Hong Kong aspect of the research project.
Chang serves as executive director for the program on Law, Finance and Governance and is an affiliate faculty member with the East Asian Studies Center and the Mershon Center for International Security Studies.
Fulbright
The Fulbright Scholar Program is administered by the Institute of International Education and is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.
For more information about the Fulbright Scholar Program contact Joanna Kukielka-Blaser. View a complete list of Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program recipients.