This program reflects Berggruen Institute Europe’s commitment to the development of cultural and philosophical ideas that shape the 21st century, by enabling public engagements and intellectual dialogues between Asian thinkers and their European counterparts in academic, political and media environment.

The first resident of the China-Europe residency program Wang Hui is one of the most acclaimed intellectuals worldwide. His magnus opus The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought delineates the long history of China’s paths to modernity. Together with his writings on political thoughts, especially during the period that he calls the “short twentieth century”, his thinking is crucial for understanding some of the gridlocks in politics today. His research interests include Chinese intellectual history, Chinese literature and social and political theory.

Professor and director Wang Hui has been invited, to Venice and Europe, for a curated stay serving both for content-production and network-building. The program, organized in collaboration with leading partner institutions, will see the professor engaged in various public events, philosophical dialogues and university lectures, in addition to meetings with representatives of international and local newspapers.

WANG Hui is the Distinguished Professor in the School of Humanities at Tsinghua University and Director of the Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. He has been elected as a foreign member of Academia Europaea (MAE) since 2024. His research interests include Chinese intellectual history, Chinese literature and social and political theory. He has received numerous awards for his scholarship, including the Luca Pacioli Award (2013) and Anneliese Maier Research Award (2018), and has been Visiting Professor and fellow at Harvard, Edinburgh, Bologna, Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, Tokyo University,the University of Washington, Wissenschaft Kolleg zu Berlin and Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study among others. He was the co-editor of the influential Chinese journal Dushu from 1996 to 2007. In 2008, the magazine Foreign Policy listed him as one of the top 100 most influential intellectuals worldwide. His recent English publications include The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (2022), China’s Twentieth Century (2016), China from Empire to Nation-State (2015), and The Politics of Imagining Asia (2011).

1 month residency program across Europe: events

→ October 5th Ferrara - China, Europe, and the world after globalisation: A conversation between Wang Hui and Lorenzo Marsili - Internazionale Festival - Open to the public
→ October 7th Venice - China, Europe and the future of civilizations. Introduced and coordinated by You Mi -
Casa dei Tre Oci - Open to the public
→ October 8th Venice - Beyond nations and empires? Dialogues from a non-European perspective - Wang Hui and Walter Mignolo. Moderated by Tommaso Visone - In collaboration with Università Ca’ Foscari - Casa dei Tre Oci Open to the public
→ October 11th Venice - Dawn of the Pacific Century - Keynote Lecture at Ca’ Foscari University
→ October 12th Venice - Capsule Gallery - Materiality and Abstraction: a philosophical rumination. Introduced and moderated by philosopher Wang Ge - Open to the public
→ October 22nd Berlin - Closed-door discussion with the European Council on Foreign Relations
→ October 24nd Berlin - Keynote lecture and masterclass at Freie Universität, Berlin