Hao Chen

Hao Chen received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Cambridge. Before joining Dartmouth, he was the Henry Chauncey 57' Postdoctoral Fellow in International Security Studies, part of the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University. He also taught undergraduate seminars on East Asia-Third World Relations in the History Department as an appointed lecturer for the 2023-2024 academic year. He has published peer-reviewed journal articles and book reviews in International History Review, Cold War History, and the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. Hao was the recipient of the 2019-2020 Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation Doctoral Fellowship. He had previously held visiting positions at the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica (Taiwan), the History Department at the National University of Singapore, and the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) at the Australian National University. 

Hao is currently developing his first book based on the Ph.D. dissertation that is tentatively entitled Representing an Anti-Imperial China: The Chinese Rivalries for Legitimacy in Cold War Afro-Asia with Cornell University Press. This book studies how the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC)/Taiwan competed amid the anti-imperial Asian-African conferences and organizations in portraying themselves as authentically representing a united 'China' as a leading postcolonial power in East Asia and thus strengthened the argument that they were the 'real/legitimate' Chinese state. This book challenges existing scholarship and extends beyond the limitations of viewing the Chinese cross-strait conflict solely through the lens of the Cold War and the Nationalist-Communist civil war. It presents the PRC and the ROC participating in a broader struggle for competitive anti-imperial internationalism that saw itself as the 'liberator' of the Third World while characterizing the other as the 'imperialist.' It further sheds light on the implication of this competition in constantly disrupting and destabilizing the movement of Afro-Asian solidarity, partially contributing to its eventual decline and disintegration from the late 1960s.  

Hao Chen's dissertation studies how China and Taiwan engaged in the movement of Afro-Asian solidarity by participating in its central conferences and organizations to advance their rivalries for representing the only legitimate post-1949 Chinese state. It is arguably the first study that explores explicitly how the China-Taiwan rivalry for international legitimacy was intertwined with competitive forms of Afro-Asian anti-imperialism while showcasing that neither side prevailed in this competition. Both sides contributed to the deteriorating Third World unity, culminating in the latter's downfall during the second half of the global Cold War. 

During his fellowship at the Dickey Center, Hao aims to complete the revision of his book and submit the entire manuscript for scholarly review by the early summer of 2025. In the meantime, he will pursue preliminary archival works in the United States to do early preparation for his second book-length academic project on the ROC's involvement in Vietnamese decolonization and postcolonial national development between the immediate aftermath of World War II and the collapse of Republic of Vietnam (ROV) in 1975.