Edmund Fung

Biography

Edmund Fung is a Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). He has had a distinguished career in the field of Asian studies, especially modern Chinese history, with research interests ranging from military to political to diplomatic to intellectual history; Chinese cultural and political thought in Republican era; in Chinese democracy; and in human rights issues. He has published several books and numerous important articles in leading journals. In addition to his major contribution as foundation Professor of Asian Studies at UWS, he played a leading role in the foundation and early history of the Chinese Studies Association of Australia and served a term as China Councillor for the Asian Studies Association of Australia.

His publications include The Military Dimension of the Chinese Revolution: The Role of the New Army in the Revolution of 1911 (1980). This book is a standard text on the subject in Western scholarship, and its Chinese translation, published in China in 1994, also remains a must-read for students of history in many universities in China and in Taiwan. Other publications include The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity: Cultural and Political Thought in the Republican Era (2010), In Search of Chinese Democracy: Civil Opposition in Nationalist China, 1929-1949 (2000), and The Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat: Britain’s South China Policy, 1924-1931 (1991).