Wang Gungwu

This book of interviews with Professor Wang Gungwu, published to felicitate him on his 80th birthday in 2010, seeks to convey to a general audience something of the life, times and thoughts of a leading historian, Southeast Asianist, Sinologist and public intellectual. The interviews flesh out Professor Wangs views on being Chinese in Malaya; his experience of living and working in Malaysia, Singapore and Australia; the Vietnam War; Hong Kong and its return to China; the rise of China; Taiwans, Japans and Indias place in the emerging scheme of things; and on the United States in an age of terrorism and war. The book includes an interview with his wife, Mrs Margaret Wang, on their life together for half a century. Two interviews by scholars on Professor Wangs work are also included, as are his curriculum vitae and a select bibliography of his works. What comes across in this book is how Professor Wang was buffeted by feral times and hostile worlds but responded to them as a left-liberal humanist who refused to cut ideological corners. This book records his response to tumultuous times on hindsight, but with a keen sense of having lived through the times of which he speaks.

As someone who has studied history for much of my life, I have found the past fascinating. But it has always been some grand and even intimidating universe that I wanted to unpick and explain to myself. Wang Gungwu is one of Asia's most important public intellectuals. He is best-known for his explorations of Chinese history in the long view, and for his writings on the Chinese diaspora. With Home is Not Here, the historian of grand themes turns to a single life history: his own. In this volume, Wang talks about his multicultural upbringing and life under British rule. He was born in Surabaya, Java, but his parents' orientation was always to China. Wang grew up in the plural, multi-ethnic town of Ipoh, Malaya (now Malaysia). He learned English in colonial schools and was taught the Confucian classics at home. After the end of WWII and Japanese occupation, he left for the National Central University in Nanjing to study alongside some of the finest of his generation of Chinese undergraduates. The victory of Mao Zedong's Communist Party interrupted his education, and he ends this volume with his return to Malaya. Wise and moving, this is a fascinating reflection on family, identity, and belonging, and on the ability of the individual to find a place amid the historical currents that have shaped Asia and the world.

The volume is organised into three parts. The first section highlights the writings of Wang in the field of higher education. There are 24 selected articles in this collection, many of which were previously published in prominent journals. Several essays originated as keynote speeches at conferences. Spanning over a period of more than three decades from 1971 (when he was with the Australian National University) to 2008 (when he was with the East Asian Institute), Wang shares in the essays his perspectives on a broad range of topics --

The Chinese overseas now number 25 to 30 million, yet the 2,000-year history of Chinese attempts to venture abroad and the underlying values affecting that migration have never before been presented in a broad overview. Despite centuries of prohibition against leaving the land and traveling and settling overseas, the earthbound Chinese--first traders, then peasants and workers--eventually found new sources of livelihood abroad. The practice of sojourning, being always temporarily away from home, was the answer the Chinese overseas found to deal with imperial and orthodox concerns. Today their challenge is to find an alternative to either returning or assimilating by seeking a new kind of autonomy in a world that will come to acknowledge the ideal of multicultural states. In pursuing this story, international scholar Wang Gungwu uncovers some major themes of global history: the coming together of Asian and European civilizations, the ambiguities of ethnicity and diasporic consciousness, and the tension between maintaining one's culture and assimilation.

Humans have been on the move for millennia. They have done so slowly as well as quickly, sometimes involuntarily, sometimes transported by force, often relocated at great cost in lives, but they have always moved. Over the centuries, improved transportation has eased the movement, even in the face of man-made or natural obstacles. But in modern times, migration has accelerated and its reach has become truly global.Whether it is Turkish gastarbeiter in Germany, Japanese Nisei in Seattle, Filipinos in Kuwait, or Haitians in Brooklyn, the costs and benefits of human mobility on such a wide and rapid scale are hotly debated. Global History and Migrations, the second volume of the Global History Series, explores the historical background of this issue by focusing on recent history, a time when human movements have been at their most dynamic. This book provides a rich, cross-cultural foundation for a more enlightened understanding of migration and its role in the unfolding shape of global history.

The book shows how the Chinese are now confident of their capacity to learn all they need from the developed world and are keen to know which parts of the past they would need to build a modern Chinese civilization. They are very conscious of the challenges coming from the United States, and are looking for ways and means to respond to a superpower that wants to preserve its dominant position in the international status quo.The book seeks to explain what China is doing and what its immediate and long-term interests are. It is not to defend or judge China. It does not employ theoretical frameworks that are not appropriate for describing Chinese conditions. It calls for understanding why history is particularly relevant to the Chinese state and most of its people. That way, we also see how the present and hopes for the future changes our perspectives of the past. Related Link(s)

Will the rise of China change the international system built by the industrial and constitutional democracies of the West of the past centuries? Should China be content with the maintenance of that system: one of competing nationstates of absolute sovereignty and relative power? Does the Confucian past contain a moral vision that may connect with universal human values of the modern world? And will the rising China become an engine for a renewed Chinese civilization that contributes to the equity in the international system? Pondering these fundamental questions, historian Prof. Wang Gungwu probes into the Chinese perception of its place in world history, and traces the unique features that propel China onto its modern global transformation. He depicts the travails of renewal that China has to face and betters our understanding of China's position in today's interconnected world. This collection of Prof. Wang Gungwu's thoughts is a mustread for us to contemplate China's root and routes along its modernization trajectory.