Stanford University

Ke Wang

Ke Wang poses in front of a bookcase.

Ke Wang, Ph.D.

  • Skyline Scholar (2025-26), Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
  • Professor Emeritus, Kobe University, Japan

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Biography

Professor Wang Ke is Professor Emeritus at Kobe University in Japan. He was admitted to Minzu University of China in 1978, and after graduation pursued graduate studies there, earning a Master of Laws (Ethnology). In 1989, he entered the University of Tokyo, where he obtained a Master of Arts in 1991 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1994. He then served as a part-time lecturer in World History at the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo. From 1996 until his retirement in 2021, he was Associate Professor and later Professor at the Faculty of Intercultural Studies, Kobe University, during which time he also served as Director of the China Office of Kobe University and Deputy Director of the Center for Asian Studies.

Professor Wang’s research covers a wide range of topics, including the state ideology of successive Chinese dynasties, the structural characteristics and transformations of historical Chinese political systems, the influence of modern Japan on modern Chinese state thought, the nature of ethnic issues and ethnic policies in modern China, the history of Islam and Islamic societies in China, as well as overseas Chinese communities and exiled societies.

Professor Wang has published extensively in Japanese, Chinese, English, and Korean. From "Tianxia" State (天下国家) to the Nation-State (民族国家): The Cognition and Practice of Historical China (《从“天下”国家到民族国家:历史中国的认知与实践, Shanghai People's Publishing House( 2020), Teacher, Friend, or Enemy? Nationalism and Modern Sino-Japanese Relations, The Chinese University Press( 2019), The East Turkestan Independence Movement 1930-1940, The Chinese University Press (2018), The Disappearing "Nation" (国民): The Discourse of "Minzu" (民族) and National Identity of Minorities in Modern China (『消失的「國民」—近代中國的「民族」話語与少數民族國家認同』), The Chinese University Press (2016), The Revolving Sino-Japanese Relations: The Yoke of the Nation-State (日中関係の旋回―民族国家の軛』), Toukyo: Fujiwara Shoten (2015), Ethnicity and Nation (민족과국가), Seoul: Northeast Asia History Foundation (2007),  Nation Building and "Ethnicity": State Construction and "Ethnicity" in 20th Century China（『二〇世紀中国の国家建設と「民族」』), Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press (2006), The Study of the East Turkestan Republic: China’s Islam and Ethnic Issues (『東トルキスタン共和国研究―-中国のイスラームと民族問題』), Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press (1995, Winner of the 18th Suntory Prize for Sciences and Humanities).