David H Y Chang Professorship in Chinese History

The final numbers are still unknown but historians estimate that there were more than 41 million military and civilian casualties in World War I, with anything up to 18 million people killed. This made the Great War, from 1914 to 1918, one of the deadliest conflicts in human history. British author, H G Wells, described it as "The war that will end war".

While the battle between the Allies and the Central Powers was the focus of the war in Europe, large parts of Asia were involved directly or indirectly in the conflagration. Some countries remained neutral as others sent troops to key battlefronts, and about 140,000 Chinese labourers went to work for American, British and French troops in France.

Professor Xu Guoqi is a Professor at the Department of History and the David H Y Chang Professor in Chinese History and founding director of the Institute of Transnational History of China at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). A renowned historian and a prolific author in both English and Chinese, he believes that there are strong shared journeys, visions, and experiences between China and the world.

Professor Xu’s research focuses on transnational history and the shared history of China and the world. His works in English include three volumes on the First World War: China and the Great War, Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War, and Asia and the Great War: A Shared History. Further exploring the shared history, he published Chinese and Americans: A Shared History in 2014, followed by Asia and the Great War: A Shared History in 2017. His third volume in the series, The Idea of China: A Contested History, will be published by Harvard University Press in early 2026.

These volumes on shared history and his related research centre around questions that have intrigued scholars and policy-makers for years: What is China and who are the Chinese? His studies are focused on China’s changing positions in the world and Chinese self-identification with other countries from ancient times to the present day.

As a pioneering scholar, Professor Xu has also published a series of studies on sports and the modern Olympics movement which have affected China’s national development and Chinese interactions with the rest of the world. His book Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008 received an academic excellence award from Chinese Historians in the United States, and was chosen as the best book of 2008 by the International Society of Olympic Historians. His new study on ancient sports and the making of modern China is due to be published in 2025. 

Professor Xu was educated in China and the United States and received his PhD in History from Harvard University. He was the first and permanent holder of the Wen Chao Chen Chair in History and East Asian Studies at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. In July 2009, after serving as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2008-09, he joined HKU and later became the inaugural holder of the Kerry Group Professorship in Globalisation History.

A leading authority on the transnational history of modern China and world, Professor Xu served as a visiting professor at pestiferous places such as Cambridge University, Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Melbourne.

His research and findings have received global recognition and have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Economist, Reuters, Los Angeles Times, South China Morning Post, and in other established newspapers and magazines or televison programmes. His Chinese-language academic memoir, 边缘人偶记 (Xu Guoqi’s Personal Memoir) published in 2017 and 2018 has generated wide attention and discussions among readers.