Gecheng Zhang

Academic Year: 
2023-24
Direction: 
To Yale
Exchange Partners: 
Waseda University
Project Title: 
Reexamining Chinese People’s World View: From “Tian-xia” to “Nation States”

Gecheng Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate at Waseda University in the field of Chinese Area Studies. He received his B.A. in Philosophy and East Asian Languages and Studies from Rutgers University-New Brunswick and his M.A. in International Relations from Waseda University Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies. He is currently serving as an administrative assistant with the Japan-China Friendship Program Research Team at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, where he conducts research on business, economics, culture, politics, arts, media, publishing industries, and defense power communications between Japan and China. His research interests mainly include intellectual history, modern history in East Asia, and East-West relations in general. His doctoral thesis intends to investigate and reconsider how Chinese people perceived the world in the late Qing Dynasty to early Republic of China period. In a broader sense, his thesis aims to reexamine Chinese intellectual history during the modern era, including the processes of formation, transformation, and manipulation of Chinese people s world views. He was awarded the Scholarship for Young Doctoral Students for two consecutive years and was a recipient of the Hattori International Scholarship for two years during his doctoral studies.