First Chinese-born MP in the UK

Yang on election night after she won her seat

The results of the UK election are devastating -- the Conservatives were literally booted out of office and Labour is in, led by Keir Starmer.

But while Labour won by a landslide, a closer look at the numbers reveal the party won 63 percent of the seats with 34 percent of the vote.

It's not a confident position for Starmer, which is why he knows he needs to get to work right away to fix the UK.

Yang's book profiles four women born in 1990s

One of those helping him do that is Yuan Yang, the first Chinese-elected MP. She was born in China and at the age of four moved with her family to the UK. She is in her mid-30s and is a former journalist, having worked at the Financial Times in the UK and in Beijing as deputy bureau chief. 

Not only that but she has just published a book called Private Revolutions: Four Women Face China's New Social Order, profiling four women who were born in the 1990s and how they faced overwhelming odds to find success, or they clinched success and now find the current economic atmosphere very challenging. 

She had a planned book tour to promote Private Revolutions because she had to go campaigning for the election that was on July 4.

On NPR she talked about her book, but also her time in Beijing, and how she felt going back and forth between the UK and China. She said people in the west don't appreciate what they have until they lose it. 

Yang said she was answering questions from residents and one remarked how she had an optimistic disposition when she talks about the future.

"I thought about this and I think I'm optimistic by personality but I also think that my optimism, my hope, a renewal of British democracy comes from seeing the exact opposite, which is the rise of authoritarianism in China, the crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong in 2019 and onwards, and the tightening of restrictions around speech, around what journalists can do, and the closing down on China from the outside world. 

"And coming back to the UK has been a breath of fresh air in terms of our ability to write, to knock on somebody's door and ask them who they might vote for and what they think of the prime minister. These are the kinds of things that are unimaginable for activists and journalists in China," she said.

We're excited to see how Yang does as MP for the new constituency of Earley and Woodley in Reading. She won the seat with 18,209 votes, just beating Conservative candidate Pauline Jorgensen with 17,361 votes.