Professor of Modern Chinese History, Department of East Asian Studies, Cambridge University.

Fellow and Director of Studies, St Catharine’s College, Cambridge.

Post - Doctoral Research Fellow, UC Berkeley, 1987- 88.

Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages, Harvard University, 1980 - 87.

B.A. in Chinese Languages and Culture, Leiden University, 1976 - 80. 

Lecturer, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge University, 1988 - 2000. Senior Lecturer 2000 - 2002. Reader 2002 - 2004. 

Director of Chinese Maritime Customs Project, 2000 - 2003; and Co-Director 2003 - 2005. 

Breaking from the Past was rated a Top Ten Book of 2017 by The Economic Observer 经济观察报 and The Eastern Critic 东方历史评论, a top 25 book by The Chinese Reading Journal 中华读书报 and a Top 50 Book by Yicai 第一财经.

2013 Elected Fellow of the British Academy.

2013 Elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.

2012 Distinguished Book Award, Society for Military History (USA), for The Battle for China.

Keynote Lecture, ‘The 1911 Revolution and the Chinese Maritime Customs Service’, Historisches Seminar, Hamburg University, 24 May 2017.

‘The Chinese Civil War: Mao Victorious’, US National WWII Museum, New Orleans, 18 November 2016.

‘Operation Ichigo’, US National WWWII Museum, New Orleans, November 2014.

Keynote Lecturer, ‘The Customs Service in the 1911 Revolution’, Academia Historica, December 2011. Part of a year-long series of international keynote lectures organized by Taiwan’s National Archives to mark the centenary of the 1911 Revolution.

Keynote Lecturer, ‘Britain and China Conference’, Bristol University, 24 August 2011.

Keynote Lecturer, Ramboud Conference, Leiden University, September 2010.

Keynote Lecturer, ‘Globalization and the Chinese Maritime Customs Service’, Huaxia Forum, Shanghai, November 2010.

Tomlinson Lecturer, University of Nottingham, December 2008.

Fennell Lecturer, University of Edinburgh, November 2007.

Commencement Speaker, Johns Hopkins – Nanjing University Center for Cultural Exchange, 15 June 2006.

Guest Professor, Department of History, Nanjing University, 1999 - 2000.

British Academy Research Readership, 1996 - 1998.

Philip E. Lilienthal Prize of the University of California Press, 1993, for From Friend to Comrade.

Leiden University Book Award for outstanding achievement in B.A. course, September 1981.

China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China (London, Profile, 2017).

Negotiation China’s Destiny in WWII, editor, with Diana Lary and Stephen MacKinnon, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2014.

Breaking with the Past: The Global Origins of Modernity in China (Columbia University Press, 2014, 150.000 words). Translated as 潮来潮去：海关与中国现代性的全球起源, Beijing, Hantang Yangguang, September 2017. Japanese translation completed and in press.  

The Cambridge History of War: Vol.4: War and the Modern World (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012), co-editor, with Roger Chickering and Denis Showalter, author of introduction to Part 1 and ‘A Hinge in Time’ (8,000 words).

The Battle for China (Stanford University Press, September 2010). Co-editor with Mark Peattie and Edward Drea. Author of ‘The Sino-Japanese War in History’ (10,000 words) and joint author with Edward Drea of ‘Chronology’ (5,500 words) and ‘Overview of Major Military Campaigns’ (10,500 words). Chinese translation in press.

War and Nationalism in China (London: Routledge, 2003). Sole author, hardback and paperback, 377pp. Translation: 中国的民族主义和战争 （北京三联出版社, 2007）.

Warfare in Chinese History, Hans van de Ven, ed, (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2000). Author of 'Introduction' (pp.1-33) and 'New States of War: Communist and Nationalist Warfare and State Building, 1928 - 1934' (pp.321 - 98).

New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution, Tony Saich and Hans van de Ven, eds, (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1994). Author of 'Introduction' (pp.XIII - XXI) and 'The Power of Words: the Emergence of the Text-Centered Party' (pp.5 - 33). Hardback and paperback.

From Friend to Comrade: the Founding of the Chinese Communist Party (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). Sole author.

‘Robert Hart and the Chinese Maritime Customs Service’, special issue of Modern Asian Studies, vol. 40:3 (July 2006). Author of ‘Introduction’ (pp.545 - 47) and ‘Robert Hart and Gustav Detring during the Boxer Rebellion’ (pp.631 - 63).

'Lifting the Veil of Secrecy: Secret Services in China during World War II', Intelligence and National Security, 16:4 (Winter 2001), author of 'Introduction' (pp.1 - 10) and 'The Kuomintang's Secret Service in Action in South China: Operational and Political Aspects of the Arrest of Liao Chengzhi (1942)', pp.205 - 37.

‘War in the Making of Modern China’ in Modern Asian Studies, vol.30:4 (1996). Author of 'Introduction' (pp.737 - 56) and 'Public Finance and the Rise of Warlordism' (pp.829 - 68).

Co-editor (with Robert Bickers), China and the West: The Maritime Customs Service Archive from the Second Historical Archives of China, Nanjing, London: Gale Thomson, 2005 - 2007. 360 reels of microfilmed documents selected from the 55,000 files of the Customs Service.

Catalogue of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service holdings at the Second Historical Archives of China, with Robert Bickers, see: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/history/customs/resources/archive.html

日本在中国的投降 – 九，九， 九 in Huang Tzu-chin, ed (March 2018, Modern History Institute)

‘Curative Finance: Francis Aglen, Bond Markets, and the Early Republic’, in Robert Bickers and Jonathan Howlett, eds, Britain and China, 1840 - 1970: Empire, Finance, and War (Routledge, Abingdon, 2016), 166 – 86.

‘The Turning Point: Japan’s Operation Ichigo and its Consequences’, in Lv Fangshan, ed, 《战争的历史与记忆》(War in History and Memory) (Taipei, Guoshiguan, 2015), 222 – 254.

‘Imperium in Imperio: The 1911 Revolution, Bond Markets, and the Chinese Maritime Customs Service’, in 《回眸实际路： 建国百年历史讲座》（Looking Back on a Road of One Hundred Years: Lectures on the History of a Century of National Reconstruction） (Taipei, Guoshiguan, 2012), 106 – 142.

‘The Maritime Customs in World War Two: A Stubborn Anomaly in a Nationalist Time’, in 《民国研究》 (Studies on Republican China), vol. 17 (2010), 182 - 212.

‘War, Authenticity, and Cosmopolitanism: Mao from 1937 to 1958’, (9,000 words) in Timothy Cheek, ed, Critical Introduction to Mao Zedong, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

‘Bombing, Japanese Pan-Asianism, and Chinese Nationalism’, Antony Best, ed, The International Relations of East Asia, 1900 - 1968 (8,000 words), London: Routledge, 2009.

‘中国军事史背景下的抗日战争’ (The War of Resistance in the Context of Chinese Military History), in 杨天石， 臧运祜 , eds, 《战略与历次战役》（Strategy and Military Operations）, (北京，社会科学文献出版社, 2009）, 130 - 157. Also translated into Japanese in Sumio Hatano and Ryoichi Tobe, eds, The Military History of the Sino-Japanese War (Tokyo, 2006).

‘Orientalism at War: Shanghai 1937’, in Azizan Baharuddin and Farida Noor Mohd. Noor, eds, Occidentalism and Orientalism (Kuala Lumpur, Centre for Civilizational Dialogue, 2008), 17 - 50.

‘Globalizing Chinese History’, History Compass 2:1 (2004), http://www.history-compass.com.

'Stilwell in the Stocks: The Chinese Nationalists and the Allied Powers in the Second World War', Journal of Asian Affairs (November 2003), pp.243 - 60.

'Military Mobilisation in China, 1840 - 1949', in Jeremy Black, ed, War in the Modern World Since 1815 (London, Routledge, 2003), pp.20 - 41.

'The onrush of modern globalisation in China', in A.G. Hopkins, ed, Globalization in World History, Pimlico 2002, pp.167 - 194.

'The Maritime Customs Service Project', in Bulletin of the British Association of Chinese Studies, 2000 (2 pages).

'Some Historical Perspectives on the Diplomacy of Chinese Nationalism', in Issues and Studies, 36:6 (November/December 2000), pp.52 - 79.

'Was Western support of Nationalist China a waste of resources and effort?', in Benjamin Frankel, Dennis Showalter, and Robert Allison, eds, History in Dispute: World War II (History in Dispute, vol. 4), (Columbia, St James Press, 2000). 7pp.

'Military and Financial Reform in the Late Qing and Early Republic', in Lin Man-hoang, ed, Finance and Modern History (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1999), pp.17 - 105.

'Thomas Wade', entry in New Dictionary of National Biography.

'The Military in the Republic', in The China Quarterly, vol. 150, June 1997. Reprinted as article in book by Oxford University Press. Further reprint in K. Swope, Warfare in China since 1600 in International Library of Essays in Military History, Ashgate, 2005.

'Public Finance and the Rise of Warlordism', in 《民国研究》 (Republican Studies) vol.1 (1994), pp.89 - 137 and vol.4 (1998), pp.64 - 84. Extended Chinese version of article in special issue on warfare in modern Chinese history in Modern Asian Studies.

Entries on Mao Zedong, Zhu De, and Lin Biao, in Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker, The Reader's Companion to Military History (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996).

'Recent Studies of Modern Chinese History' in Modern Asian Studies, vol.30:2 (1996), pp.225 - 69.

Four entries in Edwin Leung, ed, Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Revolution, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994).

'Dangbao: the CCP's First Internal Publication' in CCP Research Newsletter, vol.5, spring 1990, pp.8 - 17.

'Konfuzianismus und Kommunismus aus einer Neuen Perspektive' in Silke Krieger and Rolf Trauzettel, eds, Konfuzianismus und die Modernisierung Chinas (Mainz: v. Hase und Koehler Verlag, 1990).

'New Sources for the 1920s' in CCP Research Newsletter, vol.1 (fall 1988), pp.21 - 28.

‘A Scholar Turns Official: Zhang Jiuling, the Bureaucracy, and the Emperor’, Stone Lion Review, IX (1982), pp.29 - 40.

£50,000 Berkeley – Cambridge Summer Institute, ‘China in a Global WWII’, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation and Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes.

£36,000 BIS grant for Cooperate Teaching and Research with East China Normal University (2012 - 2014).

£50,000 Arts and Humanities Research Council China Network Grant (2008 - 2010). Co-applicant with Professor Mary Jacobus, Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. The theme of the Network was Translations and Transformations and involved Yale and Qinghua Universities.

£300,000 Arts and Humanities Research Board Major Grant for Chinese Maritime Customs Service Project. Co-applicant with Robert Bickers of Bristol University (2003 - 06).

Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Grant ($55,000) for three-year project on the history of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (2000 - 03). Extended to December 2005.

National Graduate Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education (1986 - 87).

Harvard Club of the Republic of China Fellowship (1983 - 84).

Helped organize, with Professors Ezra Vogel, Yang Tianshi, Yamada Tatsuo, Diana Lary, and Stephen Mackinnon, in organizing a series of international conferences that bring together scholars from China, Japan, Europe, and the USA. 2004 – present. So far six conferences in this series have been held, with the last conference having taken place in Taipei in 2015. I am now the lead convenor for the European and US delegation to these conferences.

2017 Organized Summer Institute on China in a Global WWII at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and the Humanities, July 2017.

2017 Chair, Visiting Committee, Centre for China Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong.

2017 – 2020 Member, Advisory Board, Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica.

2017 – 2020 Member of the European Committee of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.

2017 – 2020 Member, Hong Kong RAE Group of the University Grants Council.

2014 Chair, Humanities Panel, Hong Kong RAE.

Member, Visiting Committee, Modern History Institute of the Academia Sinica, 2009 - 2012.

Convenor of Committee for Humanitas Visiting Professor in Chinese Studies, Cambridge University, which brought a leading China scholar to Cambridge to give three lectures and participate in a symposium, 2011 - 2016.

Convenor of China Research Seminar, Department of East Asian Studies, Cambridge University, 2011 – 2013.  

Organizer, ‘European Renaissance in China’, British Academy, March 2012.

Curated exhibition on Sun Yatsen held at the European Parliament in Strassbourg. (October 2011).

AHRC Peer Review College, 2009 - 2013.

BA China Panel member, 2009 - present.

Member, Asia Panel for Higher Education Funding Council’s Research Assessment Exercise, 2004 - 2008.

Helped organize BA/ESRC graduate and early career workshop for China Studies specialists from the PRC and the UK, March 2010.

Organized workshop on Religion, Secularism, and Modernity in China, Centre for Research in the Arts and Humanities, February 2010.

Organized workshop on Translation and Conflict: Confucianism, the Classics, and Chinese/Asian Modernities, 2 July 2009. Workshop part of Translations and Transformations Workshop.

Organized international conference on the History of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service held in Nanjing in September 2005.

Editorial Board member, Journal of Modern History (Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, (2007 - present), Modern Asian Studies, 1989 - present, and Research on the War of Resistance (2013 - present).

Review manuscripts for Modern Asian Studies, The China Quarterly, War in History, Modern China, The University of California Press, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press.

Tenure and promotion reviews: Princeton University, Oxford University, University of Michigan, Nanyang Technological University, Dickinson College, University of California at San Diego.

Chair, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Research Committee, 2017ff and lead on 2021 Research Excellence Framework.

Member, General Board Sub-Committee for Promotions, School of Arts and Humanities, 2017.

Elector, Sultan Qaboos Chair in Modern Arabic Studies, 2017.

Elector, Chung-hwa Professorship in Chinese Development Studies, 2016.

Member, Joint Senior Promotions Committee, School of Arts and Humanities, Cambridge University, 2013 - present.

Chair, Senior Academic Promotions Committee, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 2011 - 2013.

Member, Faculty Board and Degree Committee, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 2011 - present.

Members, Appointments Committee for the Faculty of Human, Social, and Political Sciences, 2011 – 2015.

Chair, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 2006 - 2010. Ex officio member of virtually all Faculty committees.

School of Arts and Humanities: Member of the Council of the School, 2006 - 2010, as well as the School’s Promotions Committee and Retirement Committee, 2008 - 2010.

Executive Committee member, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and the Humanities, Cambridge University, 2009 - present.

Executive Committee Member, HRH Prince Alwaleed Centre for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, 2009 - 2010).

Review of Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Woman who Launched Modern China in BBC History Magazine, January 2014.

‘Diplomatic Chinese Whispers’, review of Margaret MacMillan: When Nixon Met Mao, Times Higher Education Supplement, 17 November 2006. Lead review.  

‘Rich Pickings for the Hawks’, review of Robert E. Herzstein: Henry Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in China, Times Higher Education Supplement, 11 August 2006.

Stuart Schram, Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings: Volume VII: New Democracy, 1939 - 1941, in China Information 20:2 (2006), 348 - 360.

Odd Arne Westad, Decisive Encounters, in Pacific Affairs (2004).

‘A War Leader’s Story Hidden by History and Muffled by Mao,’ review of Jonathan Fenby, Generallissimo Chiang Kaishek: The Man Who Lost China, in Times Higher Education Supplement, 3 December 2004.

Thomas Lyons, China Maritime Customs and China’s Trade Statistics, in The China Quarterly 178 (2004), 526 - 527.

‘The Charm of the Cobra and Slippery to the End’, review of Frederic Wakeman, Spymaster: Dai Li and China’s Secret Service, in Times Higher Education Supplement (2 January 2004).

Gregor Benton, China's Underground Revolutionaries in The China Quarterly, vol.160 (1999).

Edward Dreyer, China at War, 1901 - 1949 in The China Quarterly, vol.159 (1999).

Patricia Stranahan, Underground, in The China Quarterly, vol.157 (1999).

Arthur Waldron, From War to Nationalism in China Information.

Deng Maomao, Deng Xiaoping: My Father in The Sunday Telegraph, 12 March 1995.

Vera Schwarcz, Time for Telling Truth is Running Out in The China Quarterly, vol.137, (1994).

Han Suyin, Eldest Son, Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, 1898 - 1976 in The Sunday Telegraph, March 1994.

Roger Jeans, ed, Roads Not Taken: the Struggle of Opposition Parties in Twentieth Century China in Journal of Asian Studies vol.52:4 (1993).

Paul Ropp, ed, The Heritage of China in The China Quarterly, vol.135  (1993).

Philip Kuhn, Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 in the Times Supplement for Higher Education, 29 March 1991.

Marcia Ristaino, China's Art of Revolution in Modern Asian Studies vol.23:3 (July 1989).

Fernando Galbiati, P'eng P'ai and the Hai-lu-feng Soviet in The American Asian Review, vol.4:1 (spring 1986).

‘The International Intervention of Modern Standard Chinese’, Beijing Languages and Culture University, September 15, 2017. 

‘Civil War in China’, SOAS, London, 3 November 2016. 

‘Outsourcing Empire‘, Department of History, Hong Kong University, 8 April 2016.

‘Japan’s Surrender in China’, 8 July 2015, Commemorative Conference for 70^th Anniversary of Japan’s Surrender in China, Taipei. 

‘D-Day in China’, St John’s College, Hong Kong University, 27 June 2015.

‘From War to Post-War’, Beijing Forum, 6 November 2015. 

‘Robert Hart and the Founding of the Chinese Customs Service’, Royal Asiatic Society, Shanghai Branch Literary Salon, and M on the Bund, Shanghai. 4 April 2014. 

‘The Bond Market Wins’, Royal Asiatic Society, 16 January 2014. 

‘Toward a New Communist History’, AAS Panel on Yoshikawa Yoshihiro’s The Formation of the Chinese Communist Party, 21 March 2013

‘Tariff Nation, Smugglers Nation’, Durham University Historical Society, 26 November 2012.

‘Outsourcing Empire’, University of Manchester, 21 February 2012. 

‘The Customs Service in the 1911 Revolution’, Academia Historica, December 2011. Part of a year-long series of international keynote lectures organized by Taiwan’s National Archives to mark the centenary of the 1911 Revolution. In Chinese

Debate on ‘This House Believes that the West is not Prepared for a World Dominated by China’, The Cambridge Union, 24 November 2011.

‘Bond Markets, Revolutions, and the Chinese Maritime Customs Service’, University of Manchester, 2 November 2011. 

‘Globalization and China’, Ramboud Conference, 6 September 2011. 

‘The 1911 Revolution, Bond Markets, and the Chinese Maritime Customs Service’, ‘Britain and China Conference’, Bristol University, 24 August 2011.

‘Archives, The Past, and Oscillating Memory’, Beijing Forum, September 2010. 

‘The Maritime Customs Service and WWII’, Conference on China’s Diplomatic Relations, Chongqing, September 2009. In Chinese.

‘The Case of Liao Chengzhi’ and ‘The Chinese Customs Service in World War II’ University of British Columbia, November 2009. 

‘The Taipei Peace Treaty’, September 2009, Yale University.  

‘The Chinese Customs Service during World War II’, UC Berkeley (February 2009.)

‘War’s End and the Chinese Maritime Customs Service’, 29 January 2009, Oxford University.

‘China’s First Age of Modern Globalization’, Research Horizon Seminar, Cambridge 5 June 2008. 

‘Bunding Wuhu’, 4 April 2008, Needham Research Institute workshop on China and Materiality. 

‘The China Front in World War II’, 15 November 2007, University of Edinburgh.

‘Opportunities in Military History Outside Europe’, The George Washington University, 7 December 2006. 

‘The Sino-Japanese War and the Idea of Chinese Victimization’, Nanjing Normal University, 8 June 2006 (in Chinese). 

‘Thomas Wade and the Chinese Language’, Peking University, 12 October 2005 (in Chinese).

Vice Chair of Governors, Melbourn Village College, 2004-present. Chair of Personnel Committee (2006 - 2011), School Head Annual Review Committee, Vice-Chair, 2006 - 2011; Director, MVC Academy Trust and MVC Sports-Centre, 2012 - 2014.

Ivonne van de Ven Foundation, a small charity in the Netherlands promoting suicide prevention. Chair, 2000 - 2010.

Sailing, tennis, and (passively) football.