Michael Szonyi is Frank Wen-hsiung Wu Professor of Chinese History and former Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. A historian of the Ming dynasty and the 20th century, his recent books include The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China (2017) and The China Questions II: Critical Insights into US-China Relations (co-edited with Maria Adele Carrai and Jennifer Rudolph, 2022). He is currently writing a history of rural China in the 20th century. He spent the fall semester of 2023 as Visiting Professor at Xiamen University.