Shen Zhihua

Who is Shen Zhihua?

Shen Zhihua is a professor of history at East China Normal University and adjunct professor at Peking University and Renmin University of China. Shen is an expert in the history of the Soviet Union, Sino-Soviet relations, and the Cold War. He is director of the Center for Oriental History Studies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and honorary researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 2011 Shen was public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C..

In the early 1980s, when Shen was a graduate student in world history at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, he was sent to jail and forced to abandon his studies in a politically inspired incident. Shen went into private business, but eventually returned to Beijing, where he set up a private research organization, Zhongguo Shixuehui Dongfang Lishi Yanjiu Zhongxin, in 1993. This organization has been extremely productive, helping to publish more than 80 books and monographs and hosting many conferences and scholarly activities, especially in Soviet history and Sino-Soviet relations.