R. Bin Wong

Biography

R. Bin Wong, Director of the UCLA Asia Institute and Distinguished Professor of History.

Before coming to UCLA in 2004, Bin Wong served as Director of the Center for Asian Studies at UC Irvine where he was also Chancellor’s Professor of History and Economics. At UCLA he is responsible for fostering collaborations with a strong Asian component across campus, nationally, and internationally. These include new inter-disciplinary initiatives spanning research, graduate training, and class room curricula in K-16 settings. Wong’s own research has examined Chinese patterns of political, economic and social change, especially since eighteenth century, both within Asian regional contexts and compared with more familiar European patterns, as part of the larger scholarly efforts under way to make world history speak to contemporary conditions of globalization. Among his books, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Cornell University Press, 1997) is the best known in its English and Chinese editions. Wong has also written or co-authored more than eighty articles published in North America, East Asia and Europe, published in Chinese, English, French, German and Japanese in journals that reach diverse audiences within and beyond academia. His most recent book, co-authored with Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, is Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe (Harvard University Press, 2011); Chinese, French and Japanese translations are being made. He has been a visiting professor and researcher at institutions in China, France, Japan, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. Since 2009 he has been a Distinguished Guest Professor at the Fudan University Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences.