Wu Guoguang is a Professor of Political Science and History and Chair in China and Pacific Relations at University of Victoria, Canada. Wu grew up in Shandong, where he was a xiaxiang qingnian (a sent-down youth) and then a factory worker until admitted into Peking University when university admission examinations were restored after the Cultural Revolution. Before attending the Nieman Program at Harvard in 1989, he was an editorialist of the People’s Daily in Beijing. He also joined the preparation for the CCP’s 13th National Congress as a member of the central policy group on political reform and of the drafting group of Zhao Ziyang’s political report. He then earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Princeton University, took research positions at the East Asian Institute of Columbia University and at the Fairbank Center of Harvard, and taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong before moving to Canada in 2004. His research interests focus on China, currently including political institutions, political change, political economy, globalization, elite politics, politics of mass media, China and the world, and human security.
Wu is the author or editor of more than twenty books. His research articles have appeared in Asian Survey, China Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, Pacific Review, Social Research, and Third World Quarterly, among other publications.
