30 Facts About Wang Gungwu

Wang Gungwu has studied and written about the Chinese diaspora.

Wang Gungwu is the recipient of many honours and awards, including the Singapore Literature Prize at age 91.

Wang Gungwu, written Wang Gung Wu, was born in 1930 in Surabaya, in the Dutch East Indies to well-educated ethnic Chinese parents from Jiangsu and Zhejiang: his father, Wang Fo Wen, was a scholar of Chinese classics, and his mother was Ding Yan.

Wang Gungwu completed his secondary education in Anderson School, an English medium school in Ipoh, learning Chinese classics and history at home from his father.

Wang Gungwu enrolled at the National Central University in Nanjing, but did not complete a degree there, after his parents had returned to Ipoh in March 1948 because his father and Wang Gungwu followed later in the year because of the political chaos in China.

Wang Gungwu was a founding member of the University Socialist Club and its founding president in 1953.

Wang Gungwu was editor of the student newspaper and president of the Students' Union, and published a collection of his poetry during this time.

Wang Gungwu used a British Council scholarship to study at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, earning a PhD for his thesis "The structure of power in North China during the Five Dynasties", under Denis C Twitchett, published as a book in 1963.

Wang Gungwu taught at the University of Malaya as a lecturer in history, first in Singapore and then at the Kuala Lumpur campus from 1959.

Wang Gungwu was appointed dean of the Arts Faculty in 1962, but in 1963 but stepped down to instead become head of the history department, a position he held until 1968.

Wang Gungwu was one of the youngest ever professors ever appointed at the university.

Wang Gungwu left Australia in 1986 to becomes vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, until 1995.

Wang Gungwu stepped down as director in 2007, but remained chairman of the EAI until 2019.

Wang Gungwu was the founding chair of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS.

Wang Gungwu has written extensively in the history of China and Southeast Asia, and has studied and written about the Chinese diaspora.

Wang Gungwu 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.

Wang Gungwu helped with the founding of the Malaysian political party Gerakan, but he was not personally directly involved in the party's activities.

Wang Gungwu later said that he was not interested in a political career, but helped his friend and co-founder of the party, Tan Chee Khoon, to help draft the party's constitution.

Wang Gungwu was a key figure in the establishment of the Asian Studies Association of Australia in 1976 and served as president.

Wang Gungwu served as president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities from 1980 to 1983.

Since at least 2020 and as of 2025 Wang Gungwu was chairman of the International Advisory Council at the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman.

In 2022, Wang Gungwu was senior fellow at the Diplomatic Academy at the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and an adviser to the Ministry of Education's Social Science Research Council.

Wang Gungwu is a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Wang Gungwu married Margaret Lim Ping Ting in 1955, and they had three children.

Wang Gungwu was co-writer of his memoir Home Is Where We Are, but predeceased him.

In 2018, Wang Gungwu published the memoir of his early life, called Home Is Not Here.

Wang Gungwu became an Australian citizen in 1977, after 18 years of teaching in Australia, although he said in 2013 that he did not consider himself Australian because "both his understanding of Australia and the understanding of Australians about him had been superficial".

In 2010, Wang Gungwu gave his collection of Southeast Asian books and private archives to ISEAS, as well as donating $150,000 to NUS to set up an academic award which bearing his name.

The annual Wang Gungwu Lecture was established by the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations in partnership with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Wang Gungwu discussed the demise of the Qing dynasty in the 2011 film China's Century of Humiliation, directed by Mitch Anderson.