Edited Collections/Edited Books/Edited Volumes
by Dong WANG (she/her/hers), Ph.D., Ph.D.
Collection Editor of Asian Studies, Mark Dodge, Tiun Chhang-miâ (Minnie Mackay, 1860?–1925): Life in Taiwan's Contested Colonial Space (Long Island, New York: Lived Places Publishing, 2024).
Collection Editor of Asian Studies, Edward Drea, Spies in British Controlled Singapore: Policing the Japanese, 1921-1941 (Long Island, New York: Lived Places Publishing, 2023).
Editor (307 pages), Chapter 6: “The United States, Asia, and the Pacific, 1815-1919,” in Alan McPherson, ed., The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Guide: An Annotated Bibliography of American Foreign Relations since 1600, Brill, 2017, rev. ed. 2022, ISBN: 2468-1733, http://referenceworks.brill online.com/browse/the-shafr-guide-online; http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2468-1733_shafr_COM_06001.
Editor, “Restructuring Governance in Contemporary Urban China: Perspectives on State and Society,” a special issue of The Journal of Contemporary China (Denver, Colo., U.S.A.) 20, no. 72 (November 2011): 723-794.
Editor, “Christianity as an Issue in the History of United States-China Relations,” a special volume of The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, vol. 13 (November 2008), pp. 185.
More to Come
Single-Authored Books
2023
2023
2023
Who was Tse Tsan Tai? Insurrectionist? Socialite? Patriot? Revolutionary?
Born and raised in Australia and trained in Anglo-Hong Kong's civil service, Tse Tsan Tai (1872-1938) was all of these and more. A first native media man and anti-Qing patriot, he advocated independent thinking and a free China. Through the lens of his life, this book explores a composite identity, touching on themes of diaspora, religion, colonialism, civil society, science, and revolutions in Qing and Nationalist China.
Through her careful study of history and our contemporary times, Dr. Dong WANG uses biography to pose the question: what were the original ideals for republicanism in China?
Tse Tsan Tai (1872-1938): An Australian-Cantonese Opinion Maker in British Hong Kong, 2023, pp. 291.
A review in ASIEN (Hamburg) 168/169 (July/October 2023) by Dr. Thomas Weyrauch in German appeared in December 2024/March 2025.
2021
2023
2023
Now fully revised and updated as of March 2021 in NW Germany, The United States and China offers a comprehensive synthesis of US-Chinese relations from initial contact to the present. Balancing the modern (1784–1949) and contemporary (1949–present) periods, Dong Wang retraces centuries of interaction between two of the world’s great powers from the perspective of both sides. She examines state-to-state diplomacy, as well as economic, social, military, religious, and cultural interplay within varying national and international contexts. As China itself continues to grow in global importance, so too does the US-Chinese relationship, and this book provides an essential grounding for understanding its past, present, and possible futures.
Supplemental podcasts: The United States and China: A History from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021, rev. 2nd edition, xiii + pp. 430.
2020
2023
2020
Resulted from nearly five-decade on-site field surveys and 20-year studies, this book provides the first comprehensive history of how a UNESCO World Heritage site on the Central China Plain, Longmen’s caves and the Buddhist statuary of Luoyang, was rediscovered in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Drawing on original research and archival sources in classical mandarin/Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Swedish, as well as extensive fieldwork, Dong Wang traces the ties between cultural heritage and modernity, detailing how this historical monument has been understood from antiquity to the present. She highlights the manifold traffic and expanded contact between China and other countries as these nations were reorienting themselves in order to adapt their own cultural traditions to newly industrialized and industrializing societies.
2007
2013 & 2024/2025
2020
Managing God's Higher Learning offers a distinct empirical study of Lingnan University and addresses issues of adaptation and integration. Author, Dong Wang, demonstrates that many aspects of Lingnan ― governance, links with the local society, financial management, education for women ― have either never been made the subject of scholarly discussion or are different from what we think we know about U.S.-China relations in the past. As the first co-educational institution of higher learning in China, Lingnan made monumental strides in the management of programs for women, a fact which confounds the assumptions made by China historians. The author argues that Lingnan's growth, resilience and success can partly be accounted for by entrepreneurial operations. Wang also contends that Lingnan found ways to adapt and "layer" a Christian presence at a time when the nationalization and secularization of higher education was making rapid headway. Based on information from archives located across the Pacific, this book will appeal to scholars of Chinese history as well as those interested in Sino-American relations.
For a review, see here.
Managing God’s Higher Learning: U.S.-China Cultural Encounter and Canton Christian College (Lingnan University), 1888-1952, Rowman& Littlefield, 2007, xiii + pp. 224.
2005 Monograph
2013 & 2024/2025
2013 & 2024/2025
This study, based on primary sources, deals with the linguistic development and polemical uses of the expression Unequal Treaties, which refers to the treaties China signed between 1842 and 1946. Although this expression has occupied a central position in both Chinese collective memory and Chinese and English historiographies, this is the first book to offer an in-depth examination of China's encounters with the outside world as manifested in the rhetoric surrounding the Unequal Treaties. Author Dong Wang argues that competing forces within China have narrated and renarrated the history of the treaties in an effort to consolidate national unity, international independence, and political legitimacy and authority. In the twentieth century, she shows, China's experience with these treaties helped to determine their use of international law. Of great relevance for students of contemporary China and Chinese history, as well as Chinese international law and politics, this book illuminates how various Chinese political actors have defined and redefined the past using the framework of the Unequal Treaties.
China’s Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, x + pp. 190.
2013 & 2024/2025
2013 & 2024/2025
2013 & 2024/2025
A review of the above book, Rowman & Littlefield, 2013, xi, 377 pp. Winner of the American Library Association’s “Top 25 Outstanding Academic Titles” (out of nearly 7,000 entries across 54 fields). Review author: Gregory O. Hall, Morehouse College, Atlanta, USA, in Pacific Affairs, UBC, vol. 87, no. 4, pp. 848-849.
Another review by a then doctoral candidate, Mathew T. Brundage, who captured what Dong WANG intended to achieve in a very crowded academic sub-field. East Asian Integration Studies, vol. 7, no.21.
Photo of the famous Alaskan husky Balto (b. circa 1919-1933) left above in Central Park/NYC: by Dong WANG vom Niederrhein, Ph.D., Ph.D. in January 2020. Thanks to her child, in the early 2000s, Dr. Wang must have watched the original film on VHS (Video-Home-System) over 10 times: still seeing Balto's statue in-situ for the first time was a top agenda on Dr. Dong Wang's 13th visit to NYC. It brightened her day!
Peer-Reviewed Research Articles
by Dong WANG (she/her/hers), Ph.D., Ph.D.
“Western Zhou (1045 BCE - 771 BCE).” Database of Religious History, Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia. Published on April 09, 2024. Retrieved June 27, 2024, from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12574565, https://religiondatabase.org/ browse/2276.
“The United States in the Indo-Pacific before World War II: Trends, Strategic Thinking, and Diplomatic Realities,” ch. 1, in Routledge Handbook of US Policy in the Indo-Pacific (London: Routledge, 2022), ed. by Oliver Turner (University of Edinburgh), Nicola Nymalm (Swedish Defence University), and Wali Aslam (University of Bath), pp. 7-20.
“Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, Henan Province of P. R. China,” Database of Religious History, Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia. Published on August 24, 2021, retrieved from https://religiondatabase.org/browse/1068/.
“Already Post-Modern: Buddhist Stone Images in Luoyang and the Question of Sinicization,” in Richard Madsen (University of California at San Diego), ed., The Sinizication of Chinese Religions: from Above and Below (Leiden: Brill, 2021), pp. 86-129.
“The Pursuit of New Citizenship by Peri-urban Residents in China: Status, Rights, and Individual Choice,” China Information (SSCI) 34, no. 2 (July 2020): 250-269.
“The ‘Letter Should Not Beg’: Chinese Diaspora and Philanthropy in Higher Education,” in John Fitzgerald and Hon Ming Yip, eds., Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850-1949, Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 2020, pp. 99-120.
“‘An Influence from the Souls of these Stone Saints:’ Early American and Japanese Discovery of an Ancient Site in North China,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society China 79, no. 1 (2019/January 2020): 44-70. http://www.royalasiaticsociety.org.cn/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/RAS.Journal2019.pdf.
“Mianxiang dongxi: Cong sige you zhongda yingxiang de renwu kan ershi shiji shang banye Zhongmei guanxishi,” [面向東西：從四個有重大影響的人物看二十世紀上半葉中美關係史], transl. by LI Shan, Jindai zhongwai guanxishi yanjiu [Studies in modern Chinese foreign relations近代中外關係史研究], vol. 9 (2019): 194-210, published in Beijing by Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe (Social Sciences Academy Press社會科學文獻出版社).
“Between Tribute and Unequal Treaties: How China Saw the Sea World in the Early Nineteenth Century,” History: The Journal of Historical Association (Britain, A&HCI) 103, no. 355 (April 2018): 262-285. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ 1468-229X.12574.
“The Unequal Treaties and the Treaty Ports,” in Tim Wright, ed., Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies, New York: Oxford University Press, released on July 24, 2018, http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/abstract/document/obo-9780199920082/obo-9780199920082-0148.xml?rskey=h30j2f&result=2&q=dong+wang#firstMatch.
“Jindai huaqiao yu Zhongguo gaodeng jiaoyu,” [近代華僑與中國高等教育公益事業Modern Chinese diaspora and philanthropy in higher education], transl. by Shi Xiaoyun (史曉雲), Jindai Zhongwai guanxishi yanjiu [Studies in modern Chinese foreign relations近代中外關係史研究], vol. 7 (August 2017): 207-227, published in Beijing by Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe (Social Sciences Academy Press社會科學文獻出版社).
“Xin shiqi yingwen shijie zhong de jindai zhongwai guanxishi yanjiu,” [新時期英文世界中的近代中外關係史研究 Modern China in world affairs: A historiographical essay] Zhongguo shehui kexue pingjia [中國社會科學評價] (Beijing, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) 10, no. 2 (June 2017): 65-75. Excerpt appeared in Zhongguo shehui kexue wenzhai [中國社會科學文摘], no. 10 (2017): 24-25.
“US-China Economic Relations,” in Andrew Tan, ed., A Handbook of US-China Relations, Surrey, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016, pp. 155-177.
“U.S.-China Trade, 1971-2012: Insights into the U.S.-China Relationship,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 11, issue 24, no. 4, June 17, 2013, at http://www.japanfocus.org/-Dong-Wang/3958.
“China and the World, 1900-1949,” in Tim Wright, ed., Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies, New York: Oxford University Press, published on April 22, 2013, DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920082-0048. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com.
“Restructuring Governance in Contemporary Urban China: Perspectives on State and Society,” Journal of Contemporary China 20, no. 72 (November 2011): 723-733.
“China’s Trade Relations with the United States in Perspective,” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 39, no. 3 (October 2010): 165-210.
“Internationalizing Heritage: UNESCO and China’s Longmen Grottoes,” China Information 24, no. 2 (July 2010): 123-147.
“The Advance to Higher Learning: Power, Modernization, and the Beginnings of Women’s Education at Canton Christian College,” in Pioneer Chinese Christian Women. Gender, Christianity, and Social Mobility, ed. by Jessie G. Lutz, Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2010, pp. 371-392.
“From Lingnan to Pomona: Charles K. Edmunds and His Chinese-American Career,” in China’s Christian Colleges: Cross-Cultural Connections, 1900-1950, ed. by Daniel Bays and Ellen Widmer, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009, pp. 173-191.
“Portraying Chinese Christianity: The American Press and U.S.-China Relations since the 1920s,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 13 (November 2008): 81-119.
“Zhongguo yu shijie xiangyu: Bupingdeng tiaoyue, diguo zhuyi he minzu zhuyi,” [中國與世界相遇: 不平等條約、帝國主義和民族主義China encountered the world: the Unequal Treaties, imperialism and nationalism] in Wang Jianlang (王建朗) and Luan Jinghe (欒景河), eds., Jindai Zhongguo, Dongya yu shijie [Modern China, East Asia, and the World], Beijing: Shehui kexuewenxian chubanshe, 2008, pp. 506-528.
“Cong Lingnan dang’an chensi Zhongmei wenhua xiangyu,” [從嶺南檔案 (1888-1952) 沉思中美文化相遇 A reflection on Sino-American cultural encounter: from the perspective of the Lingnan archives] transl. by Luo Xinglian (羅興連), proofed by (劉賢), in Xixue yu Qingdai wenhua [西學與清代文化Western learning and Qing culture], ed. by Huang Aiping (黃愛平) and Huang Xingtao (黃興濤), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2007, pp. 127-145.
Three entries on Mao Zedong, Guangzhou, and the Qing Dynasty for Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450, 3 vols., edited by Thomas Benjamin, Detroit, Mich.: Macmillan Reference, 2006.
“Circulating American Higher Education: The Case of Lingnan University (1888-1951),” Journal of American-East Asian Relations9, nos. 3-4 (delayed fall-winter 2000 issue, the back issue appeared in year 2006): 147-167.
“The Dissemination of International Law and the Study of the Unequal Treaties in China,” in As China Meets the World: China’s Changing Position in the International Community, edited by Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, Agnes Schick-Chen, and Sascha Klotzbücher, Vienna, Austria: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press), 2006, pp. 169-193.
“Beiyang shiqi guojifa zai Zhongguo,” [北洋時期國際法在中國International law in China during the Beiyang period] in Beiyang shiqi de Zhongguo waijiao [北洋时期的中国外交Chinese diplomacy in the Beiyang era], ed. by Jin Guangyao and Wang Jianlang, Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2006, pp. 147-156.
“Redeeming ‘A Century of National Ignominy:’ Nationalism and Party Rivalry over the Unequal Treaties, 1928-1947,” Twentieth-Century China 30, no. 2 (April 2005): 72-100.
“The Discourse of Unequal Treaties in Modern China,” Pacific Affairs 76, no. 3 (November 2003): 399-425.
“Ershishiji ershi niandai ‘bupingdeng tiaoyue’ kouhao zhi jiantao,” [二十世紀二十年“不平等條約”口號之檢討A study of the Unequal Treaties as political symbols in the 1920s] Shixue yuekan [史學月刊The journal of historical science] 5 (2002): 70-77.
“Zhongying ‘Makai tiaoyue’ de tanpan yu qianding,” [中英《馬凱條約》的談判與簽訂The negotiation of the Sino-British Mackay Treaty] Xueshu yuekan[學術月刊Academic monthly] 4 (1996): 97-102.
“Ni Weisi chuanjiao fangfa,” [倪維思傳教方法Nevius’ missionary approach] Shijie zongjiao ziliao [世界宗教資料World religious sources] 2 (1991): 15-21. Also published in Yihetuan yujindai Zhongguo shehui guoji taolunhui lunwenji [“義和團與近代中國社會”國際討論會論文集Collection of essays presented at the international symposium on the Boxer Movement and modern Chinese society], Jinan: Qilu chubanshe, 1992, pp. 526-545.
“Daoxian jingshipai Jidujiao guan shuping,” [道鹹經世派基督教觀述評The anti-Christian expressions of the State-craft Scholars during the Daoxian period] Beifang luncong [北方論叢North China forum] 2 (1990): 91-94.
Invited Review Articles and Book Reviews
Introduction to H-Diplo Roundtable/Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum (ISSF) on Scott M. Moore, China’s Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology are Reshaping China’s Rise and the World’s Future (Oxford University Press, 2022), published at H-Diplo/ISSF, January 12, 2024.
3700-word Review of Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen, Sinostan: China’s Inadvertent Empire (Oxford University Press, 2022), H-Diplo, 2023.
Roundtable Review of Michael Franczak, Global Inequality and American Foreign Policy in the 1970s (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2022), H-Diplo, 2023.
Introduction to H-Diplo Roundtable XXIV-19 on Chien-Wen Kung, Diasporic Cold Warriors: Nationalist China, Anticommunism, and the Philippine Chinese, 1930s-1970s. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2022, published on January 23, 2023, https://hdiplo.org/to/RT24-19.
Review of Odd Arne Westad, Empire & Righteous Nation: 600 Years of China-Korea Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2021), The Review, International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden, the Netherlands), 2022.
Review for H-Diplo Forum, no. 910, December 12, 2019, pp. 17-19, https://hdiplo.org/to/AR910, on The Journal of American-East Asian Relations’ “Christianity, Gender, and the Language of the World,” edited by Jane Hunter.
Review of Victor Cunrui Xiong, Capital Cities and Urban Form in Pre-Modern China: Luoyang, 1038 BCE to 938 CE (Routledge, 2017), China Review International 24, no. 2 (2017; May 2019): 156-159.
“The 1949 Divide: A Revisit,” review of Kevin Peraino, A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949 (New York: Crown, 2018), Diplomatic History 43, no. 2 (April 2019): 394-96, https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dhy093.
Review of Kendall A. Johnson, The New Middle Kingdom: China and the Early American Romance of Free Trade (Baltimore, Md.: JohnsHopkins UP, 2017), Literature & History 27, no. 2 (November 2018): 214-216.
Review of Andrew C. A. Jampoler, Embassy to the Eastern Courts: America’s Secret Pivot toward Asia, 1832-37 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2015), The Historian 80, no. 2 (summer 2018): 397-398. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ hisn.12665.
Review of Stuart Harris, China’s Foreign Policy (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2014), Pacific Affairs 89, no. 1 (March 2016): 127-129.
“A Forgotten Voyage: A Review of East Sails West: The Voyage of the Keying, 1846-1855,” Guojia hanghai [National Maritime Research] issue/vol. 11 (April 2015): 135-143.
Review of John Haddad, America’s First Adventure in China: Trade, Treaties, Opium, and Salvation (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 2013), The Journal of the Early Republic 34, no. 2 (summer 2014): 279-282.
Review of Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750 (New York: Basic Books, 2012), Twentieth-Century China 38, no. 2 (September 2013), online.
Review of Roger B. Jeans, ed., The Marshall Mission to China, 1945-1947: The Letters and Diary of Colonel John Hart Caughey(Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), China Review International 19, no. 1 (2012, the back issue published in February 2014): 97-99.
Review of Jonathan Goldstein, Stephen Girard’s Trade with China 1787-1824: The Norms versus the Profits of Trade (Portland, Maine: MerwinAsia, 2011), China Review International 19, no. 1 (2012, the back issue published in February 2014): 71-73.
Review of Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2011), International Bulletin of Missionary Research 36, no. 4(October 2012): 219-220.
Review of Brantly Womack, ed., China’s Rise in Historical Perspective (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), Pacific Affairs 84, no. 3 (September 2011): 555-557.
Review of Antony Best, ed., The International History of East Asia, 1900-1968: Trade, Ideology and the Quest for Order(London: Routledge, 2010), geschichte.transnational (history.transnational, University of Leipzig, Germany), H-Soz-u-Kult(March 11, 2011), http://geschichte-transnational.clio-online.net/rezensionen/2011-1-182.
Review of Paul A. Cohen, Speaking to History: The Story of King Goujian in Twentieth-Century China (University of California Press, 2008), The Chinese Historical Review 14, no. 2 (fall 2007): 196-197.
Review of Lisa Joy Pruitt, A Looking-Glass for Ladies: American Protestant Women and the Orient in the Nineteenth Century, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 29, no. 4 (October 2005): 217.