Education

Awards and Grants

Research

Sino-American Relations in the 1920s: Wu Pei-fu and Americans living in China

 This project investigates the multi-dimensional interactions between Zhili warlord Wu Pei-fu (1874-1939) and a diverse group of American actors in China during the 1920s, including diplomats, military officers, representatives of multinational corporations, arms smugglers, journalists, and missionaries. The 1920s represented a pivotal transitional period in China’s modern diplomatic history, marked by the shift from the traditional “treaty system” to “revolutionary diplomacy.” During this decade, Washington’s engagement with Chinese affairs was relatively limited, while China itself was caught in the turmoil of warlordism and the disintegration of central authority. Within this political vacuum, meaningful diplomatic interaction between China and the United States was increasingly shaped not by official state institutions, but by a network of non-state actors operating on both sides. On one hand, Americans living in China—often lacking formal diplomatic authority—projected their ideals, ambitions, and reformist visions onto Chinese strongmen such as Wu Pei-fu, with whom they sought to cooperate in China’s transformation. On the other hand, Wu actively courted these Americans to gain political, military, and media support in his bid for dominance in the warlord era. My study seeks to examine the reciprocal nature of these unofficial relationships and analyzes how such interactions influenced the course of China’s nation-state formation and contributed to the informal institutionalization of Sino-American relations during this formative period.

Publications

The Role of the Non-State Actor in Sino-American Relations: An Analysis based on the Rockefeller Foundation and the Peking Union Medical College, included in the 2nd International Conference on Social Psychology and Humanity Studies (ICSPHS 2024)