Biography
Wang Hui was born in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, in 1959. After finishing high school in Yangzhou, Wang Hui worked for two years as a factory worker before entering college. He completed his undergraduate studies at Yangzhou University (then Yangzhou Normal College), and then graduate studies at Nanjing University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences where he received his Ph.D. in 1988.
Wang Hui was a participant in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. He was investigated about his involvement, but nothing significant or serious was found. He was later sent to "re-education" (“锻炼”, not to be confused with Re-education through labor “劳动教养”) in Shangluo, Shaanxi for one year. Through his many publications and journalistic endeavors, he has repeatedly called attention to the human suffering that economic reforms have visited on farmers, laid-off workers, women migrants, and other weak sectors of society; for these views, he has been called the leader of the New Left although Wang Hui has cautioned journalists that he prefers not to embrace this label:
Actually, people like myself have always been reluctant to accept this label, pinned on us by our adversaries. Partly this is because we have no wish to be associated with the Cultural Revolution, or for that matter with what might be called the 'Old Left' of the reform-era CCP. But it is also because the term New Left is a Western one, with a very distinct set of connotations – generational and political – in Europe and America . Our historical context is Chinese, not Western, and it is doubtful whether a category imported so explicitly from the West could be helpful in today's China.
Read more about this topic: Wang Hui (intellectual)
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