Guoguang Wu is a Senior Research Scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, Stanford University. His research specializes in Chinese politics and comparative political economy, including, in China studies, elite politics, national political institutions and policy making mechanisms, transition from communism, the politics of development, and China’s search for its position in the world, and, in comparative political economy, transition of capitalism with globalization, the birth of capitalism in comparative perspectives, the worldwide rise of the economic state, and the emergence of human security on global agenda.

He is the author of four books, including China’s Party Congress: Power, Legitimacy, and Institutional Manipulation (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Globalization against Democracy: A Political Economy of Capitalism After its Global Triumph (Cambridge University Press, 2017), editor or coeditor of six English-language volumes, and author or editor of more than a dozen of Chinese-language books. His academic articles have appeared in journals such as Asian Survey, China Information, China Perspectives, China Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, Pacific Review, Social Research, and Third World Quarterly. He also frequently contributes to The China Leadership Monitor. Some of his works have been translated and published in the languages of French, Japanese, and Korean.

Guoguang received a Ph.D. and a MA in politics from Princeton University (1995; 1993), a MA in journalism/political commentary from the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (1984), and a BA in journalism from Peking University (1981). During the late 1970s, he was among the sent-down youth in Mao's China, and a textile factory worker following the death of Mao. In the late 1980s, he worked in Beijing as an editorialist and a political commentator in Renmin ribao (The People's Daily) and, concurrently, a policy adviser on political reform and a speechwriter to the Zhao Ziyang leadership. His later appointments include: a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University (1989-1990), a Luce Fellow at the East Asian Institute of Columbia University (1990-91), and an An Wang Post-doctoral Fellow at the John King Fairbank Center of Harvard University (1995-96). Before joining Stanford in 2022, he taught at the University of Victoria in Canada and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Currently he is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for China Analysis of the Asia Society Policy Institute.