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William C. Kirby

T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies; Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University

Areas of expertise

  • - - Doing business in China in the early 21st century
  • - - Chinese companies and consumer markets
  • - - Chinese Universities: Leaders of the 21st Century?
  • - - The enduring role of State-Owned Enterprises in China
  • - - Business, political, and cultural relations across the Taiwan Strait
  • - - Modern China
  • - - Business Administration

Major works

  • Abrami, Regina M., William C. Kirby, and F. Warren McFarlan. Can China Lead? Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth. Harvard Business Review Press, 2014.
  • Kirby, William C., ed. The People's Republic of China at 60--An International Assessment. Cambridge: Harvard University, Asia Center, 2011.
  • Alford, William P., William Kirby and Kenneth Winston, eds. Prospects for the Professions in China. Routledge Studies on Civil Society in Asia. London: Routledge, 2010.
  • Kirby, William C. and Dayong Niu, eds. China and the World: Internationalization, Internalization, Externalization (Zhongguo yu shijie: guojihua, neihua yu waihua). Beijing: Hebei People's Press, 2007.
  • Kirby, William C., Gong Li and Robert Ross, eds. The Normalization of U.S.-China Relations: An International History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.
  • Kirby, William C., Mechthild Leutner and Klaus Mühlhahn, eds. Global Conjectures: China in Transnational Perspective. Vol. 30, Berliner China-Hefte. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2006.
  • Kirby, William C., ed. Realms of Freedom in Modern China. Vol. 15, Making of Modern Freedom. Stanford University Press, 2004.
  • Kirby, William C., James Chin Shih, Man-houng Lin and David A. Pietz, eds. State and Economy in Republican China: A Handbook for Scholars. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University, Asia Center, 2001.
  • Kirby, William C. Germany and Republican China. Stanford University Press, 1984.
  • Kirby, William C., ed. _Germany and the Two World Wars. _Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981. (Translator, Andreas Hillgruber.)

Social links

About me

William C. Kirby is a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor. He serves as Chairman of the Harvard China Fund, the University's academic venture fund for China, and Faculty Chair of the Harvard Center Shanghai, Harvard's first university-wide center located outside the United States. A historian of modern China, Kirby's work examines contemporary China’s business, economic, and political development in an international context. He writes and teaches on the growth of modern companies in China (Chinese and foreign; state-owned and private); Chinese corporate law and company structure; business relations across Greater China (PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong); and China’s relations with the United States and Europe.