Barry J. Naughton is an American economist currently serving as So Kwanlok Chair of Chinese International Affairs at the University of California, San Diego's Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies.
[2]: 17 Relatively few other Western historians have addressed the Third Front in detail and those that do generally cite Naughton extensively.
[2]: 17 In Naughton's view, China's use of the nomenklatura system of personnel management for Communist Party cadre is a core institution reinforcing national unity.
[4] His 1995 book "Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978–1993" won the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize.
Naughton is a participant of the Task Force on U.S.-China Policy convened by Asia Society's Center on US-China Relations.