Wang Yongquan - Higher Education Thinker and Leader

Abstract

Wang Yongquan was born in 1929 to a father who had grown up in an impoverished rural family, similar to that of Pan Maoyuan and Wang Fengxian. His father had managed to study abroad, however, and returned to Shanghai as a professor in the mid-1920s, later moving to Beijing. Wang grew up in Beijing during the dark days of the looming Japanese invasion. After 1937, when the Japanese occupied Beijing, he followed his father to hinterland cities such as Kunming and Chongqing, thus receiving his education in different places along the way. At the time of the successful Chinese Revolution of 1949, Wang was 20 years old and an undergraduate student of physics at China’s famous Tsinghua University.