Wang Gungwu


Wang Gungwu, is an Australian sinologist. He has studied and written about the Chinese diaspora, but he has objected to the use of the word diaspora to describe the migration of Chinese from China because both it mistakenly implies that all overseas Chinese are the same and has been used to perpetuate fears of a "Chinese threat", under the control of the Chinese government. An expert on the Chinese tianxia concept, he was the first to suggest its application to the contemporary world as an American Tianxia.

Background

Wang was born in Surabaya, Indonesia to Overseas Chinese parents from Taizhou, Jiangsu and grew up in Ipoh, Malaysia. He completed his secondary education in :ms:Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Anderson|Anderson School, an English medium school in Ipoh. Wang studied history in the University of Malaya, where he received his bachelor's and master's degrees. He was a founding member of the University Socialist Club and its founding president in 1953.
He holds a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London for his thesis The structure of power in North China during the Five Dynasties. He taught at the University of Malaya. He was one of the founders of the Malaysian political party Gerakan, but he was not personally involved in the party's activities. In 1968 he went to Canberra to become Professor of Far Eastern History in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. He took a turn as Director of RSPAS, 1975-80. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong from 1986 to 1995. In 2007, Wang became the third person to be named University Professor by the National University of Singapore.
In 1994, Wang was awarded the Academic Prize of the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize by the Japanese city of Fukuoka. In 2020 Wang was awarded the Tang Prize in Sinology.

Positions held

Wang is a University Professor at the National University of Singapore and also Chairman of the Managing Board of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He was the Chairman of the East Asian Institute in Singapore. Wang was a Distinguished Professorial Fellow at the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute where he was chairman of the board of Trustees from 1 November 2002 to 31 October 2019. He is also an Emeritus Professor of the Australian National University. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, elected in 1970 and serving as President from 1980-1983.

Selected publications

Books

Wang discussed the demise of the Qing dynasty in China's Century of Humiliation.