Wang Guoxiang was born in 1935 in Nanyang, Henan Province. In 1954, he entered Peking University to study journalism. In 1957 he was labelled a “rightist” and was expelled from the university as a result of the anti-Rightist movement mounted by Mao Zedong. In 1958 he was thrown in jail in Beijing and was then sent to a labor camp in Tianjin. He was released and sent back to his home province to continue multiple service labor duties.
After the outbreak of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1966, Wang was purged again. He began studying economics in 1972 and was jailed again later the same year for posting a piece of writing on the Peking University campus concerning the economic optimum principle. In 1979, he was “rectified” and assigned a job at the Statistics Bureau of the Tanghe County Government in Henan Province. Shortly thereafter he was slated to work as a reporter for the Henan branch office of the Xinhua News Agency.
In 1982, Wang began teaching economics and international finance at Zhenzhou University. In the late 1980s, as China under Deng Xiaoping became more liberal, he was entrusted by the government authorities to found the School of Finance of the People’s Bank of China (present-day PBC School of Finance at Tsinghua University), where he served as the head of the department of international finance and enjoyed the benefit of a state council allowance. Before his retirement in 1998, Wang was already a highly venerated economist in China’s academic circle. He died in Beijing in February 2022.
The personal collection includes video clips of the oral interviews of Wang Guoxiang, photos, writings, manuscripts, letters, and correspondence ranging from the 1930s to the 2020s. The materials offer access to comprehending the history of an intellectual who struggled to survive and thrive in the turbulent history of contemporary China.
