James Gao (1948-2021), Historian of the Chinese Revolution and Member of the Center for East Asian Studies

James Gao, Professor of Modern Chinese History at the University of Maryland, College Park, died on October 26, 2021, at the age of 73. The cause was cancer.

Professor Gao was born and raised in Hangzhou, China, the capital of Zhejiang Province in Southeast China. In 1983, he earned a master’s degree in Political Science from Peking University and taught at that university as an Assistant Professor from 1983 to 1986. He did his graduate training at Yale University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1994. He was an Associate Professor of History at Christopher Newport University from 1992 to 1998. He joined the faculty of the History Department of the University of Maryland, College Park as an Associate Professor in 1998. Since 1999, he was a regular summer Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Contemporary Chinese Studies at Peking University. 

Professor Gao was a founding member and, in 1987-88, the first President of the organization of Chinese Historians in the United States (CHUS). As he explained in his 2008 essay, “From Margin to Cutting Edge: The Search for a Paradigm in Chinese Historical Studies,” in The Chinese Historical Review, CHUS served to bring together historians who came of age and had done their undergraduate work in China and then decided to do graduate training and work in American universities. The essay was both a call for scholarly innovation as well as a most interesting account of the situation of his generation of Chinese historians at the early phases of their academic careers in the United States. His scholarship was part of a creative and bold result of this challenging cross-fertilization of cultures begun in an era of relative openness in China. 

His published works include Meeting Technology’s Advance: Social Change in China and Zimbabwe in the Railway Age (Greenwood, 1997), and The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949-54 (University of Hawaii Press, 2004). He wrote the 700 entries in the Historical Dictionary of Modern China, 1800-1849 (Scarecrow, 2009). His Shanghai Market: Rice Consumers, Merchants and the State, 1964-1955 was completed and in a publishers’ review process at the time of his death. In addition, his fifteen articles in scholarly journals examined multiple issues including food rationing, photography of Chinese disasters, famine in the 1950-s, consumerism, the history of rice in Shanghai, war and nationalism during the Korean War years, and rural revolutionaries in the cities. 

Professor Gao was remembered by his former students as a challenging and inspiring teacher. He might give students an assignment to read and categorize 20 years’ scholarly journals about modern China or advise them over a cup of tea. Christopher Heselton, who graduated from this university in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in history and Chinese, had Professor Gao as his first professor in Chinese history and got a lot of guidance and direction outside of class in a relaxed setting. Heselton later built his career around China and its history. He’s now a global studies professor and the associate director for East Asian partnerships for the global strategies office at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

Though his work and memory will endure, Professor Gao’s death is a great loss for the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. His introductory courses on East Asian civilizations served as the foundation for East Asian Studies from where our students began their journey in the exploration and understanding of East Asia. His life and work will continue to inspire us in this direction. Professor Gao is survived by his wife, Laura Liu, and his son, Weijing Gao. 

-Jeffrey Herf, November 7, 2021