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Wenfang Tang

Chinese political scientist

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 27, 2025
Entity authorityQ130296479
Source-derived summary

Wenfang Tang (Chinese: 唐文方) is a political scientist and expert in Chinese politics. He is currently a Presidential Chair Professor and the dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. Prior to this, he held positions at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Iowa, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Education and career

In 1977, the People's Republic of China reinstated the National Higher Education Entrance Examination (Gaokao) that had been suspended for 10 years due to the Cultural Revolution. That year, Tang was admitted to Peking University's Department of International Politics. After his graduation from Peking University in 1982, he went to the United States for graduate studies and earned an MA in political science from the University of Kansas in 1985 and a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago in 1990.

Between 1990 and 2009, Tang started his academic career in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he rose through the ranks of assistant professor, associate professor, and full professor. Between 2009 and 2019, he worked at the University of Iowa and was appointed the C. Maxwell and Elisabeth M. Stanley Hua Hsia Professor of Political Science and International Studies and the Chair of the Department of Political Science. In 2019, Tang moved to Hong Kong, and served as the Head and Chair Professor in the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology until 2022. In March 2022, he joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen in Mainland China, where has since then been a Presidential Chair Professor and the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Wenfang Tang” as chinese political scientist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Wenfang, Tang and Chinese.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1977, 1982, 1985, 1990—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Wenfang, Tang and Chinese providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Wenfang Tang”, the useful work is to connect “chinese political scientist” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q130296479. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1977, 1982, 1985 and 1990.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Wenfang Tang”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Wenfang Tang primary sources, Wenfang Tang archive and Wenfang research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Wenfang Tang”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Wenfang Tang” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.