Welcome to the "Rhodes Scholars & China" interview series, where our Chinese Scholars interview Scholar alumni with work or life ties to China, including leaders in academia, journalism, business, medicine, law, and many more fields.
In this first instalment, Xiaorui Zhou (China & Pembroke 2020) interviews Michael Szonyi (Ontario & Merton 1990). Michael Szonyi is Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Frank Wen-hsiung Wu Memorial Professor of Chinese History at Harvard University. He is a social historian of late imperial and modern China who studies local society in southeast China using a combination of traditional textual sources and ethnographic-style fieldwork. A frequent commentator on Chinese affairs, Szonyi is a Fellow of the Public Intellectual Program of the National Committee on US-China Relations. Read Szonyi's full biography.
The English version is published at the Rhodes Blog. A Chinese version of this interview, translated by Xiaorui Zhou, is available here.