Chen Jian is
Hu Shih Professor of History and China-US Relations emeritus at
Cornell University. His specialties include modern Chinese history, history of Chinese-American relations, and
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
international history. He is also
Zijiang
The Zi River (资水) in Hunan, China, flows into the Yangtze River via Lake Dongting
Dongting Lake () is a large, shallow lake in northeastern Hunan Province, China. It is a flood basin of the Yangtze River, so its volume depends on the seaso ...
Distinguished Visiting Professor at
East China Normal University and Distinguished Global Network Professor of History at
New York University Shanghai.
Chen Jian has held the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at
LSE IDEAS
LSE IDEAS is a foreign policy think tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science. IDEAS was founded as a think tank for Diplomacy and Strategy in February 2008, succeeding the Cold War Studies Centre founded in 2004. The Chair is ...
(2008-2009), where he remains a Senior Fellow, and was a research scholar from 2009-2013 at the
University of Hong Kong. He was also (2013-2014) a Global Fellow of the
Woodrow Wilson Center, where he has been a Senior Scholar since 2005. He has also been the Zijiang Distinguished Visiting Professor at East China Normal University since 2000.
Professor Chen received an M.A. from
Fudan University and
East China Normal University in 1982 and his Ph.D. from
Southern Illinois University in 1990.
Awards and honors
Chen Jian was the recipient of the Jeffrey Sean Lehman Grant for Scholarly Exchange with China, Cornell University, 2007. His other fellowships include Jennings Randolph Senior Fellowship for International Peace, United States Institute of Peace, 1996-1997 and the Norwegian Nobel Institute Fellowship, Oslo, Norway, 1993.
In 2005, he shared in the honors for an
Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
for Outstanding Achievement in News and Documentary Research for ''Declassified: Nixon in China''.
Contributions and reception
Chen's first major book was ''China's Road to the Korean War'', which received much praise and was widely cited.
Lucian Pye, writing in
Foreign Affairs
''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and ...
said ''Mao's China and the Cold War'' has "taken some giant steps toward advancing the West's understanding of Mao Zedong's policies during the Cold War." Pye praised Chen for correcting the view of Mao and Zhou Enlai as "relaxed and worldly wise" pragmatists, a view put forward by
Richard Nixon and
Henry Kissinger to justify the opening to China. In fact, Chen argues, "Mao was driven by ideology and insatiable ambition as he led the communists to power and sought Stalin's blessing for his leadership."
Allen Whiting's review of it in
Political Science Quarterly called Chen's work a "superb study."
Bibliography
* ''Zouxiang quanqiu zhanzheng zhilu: erci dazhan qiyuan yanjiu'' (''The Road to a Global War: A Chinese Study of the Origins of the Second World War''; Shanghai: Xuelin, 1989).
* ''China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994)
* ''Chinese Communist Foreign Policy and the Cold War in Asia: New Documentary Evidence, 1944-1950'' (co-edited with Zhang Shuguang; Chicago: Imprint Publications, 1996)
* ''The China Challenge in the 21st Century: Implications for US Foreign Policy'' (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 1998)
* ''Mao's China and the Cold War'' (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001)
*
References
External links
Chen Jian homepage at the Cornell University Department of History
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chen, Jian
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Historians of China
Cornell University Department of History faculty
Fudan University alumni
East China Normal University alumni