TaipeiJune 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The winner of the 2026 Tang Prize, 7th Edition in Sinology has been officially announced. This year’s honor is awarded to Ge Zhaoguang, a Distinguished Senior Professor at the National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies and the Department of History at Fudan University in China, in recognition of his expertise in ancient Chinese thought and scholarship. From his early work on Chan Buddhism, Daoism, and the history of philosophical thought, to his recent series of discussions on “What is China,” his insights are uniquely profound, exerting a far-reaching influence not only in China but also across the global Chinese-speaking intellectual community, as well as academic circles in Japan, Korea, North America, and Europe.
2026 Tang Prize, 7th Edition in Sinology Announced: Ge Zhaoguang Honored for Profound Research on the History of Ancient Chinese Thought
Professor Ge Zhaoguang, born in 1950, was sent down to the Miao frontier in Guizhou during his youth. He did not enter Peking University until the age of 27, where he earned both his bachelor’s and graduate degrees. This experience profoundly shaped his focus on the conditions of grassroots society and peripheral ethnic groups. He previously served as an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Yangzhou Normal College and a Professor in the Department of History at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He is currently a Distinguished Senior Professor at the National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies and the Department of History at Fudan University. His academic career has been repeatedly recognized with major awards both in China and abroad, and his prolific writings have set an outstanding benchmark for contemporary Sinological research.
Professor Ge has authored numerous works across a broad range of fields, including the history of Chinese thought, religious history, classical literature, and philology. His contributions to the study of intellectual history are particularly acclaimed by the academic community. His representative early-career work, *A History of Chinese Thought*, expands the scope of intellectual history with a novel approach, proposing that the writing of intellectual history should move from the “center” to the “periphery,” from the “canonical” to the “ordinary,” and from “elite thought” to “the concepts of common life.” Professor Ge incorporates the knowledge, beliefs, and culture of ordinary people into his writing framework, breaking the traditional boundaries of intellectual history and opening new spaces for dialogue between intellectual history, cultural history, and social history.
In recent years, Professor Ge has devoted considerable effort to exploring the historical discourse on “China,” publishing a trilogy of studies on “China”: *Here in ‘China’: Reconstructing the Historical Discourse on ‘China’* (2011), *What is ‘China’?: Territory, Ethnicity, Culture, and History* (2014), and *The Inner and Outer of Historical China: A Reclarification of the Concepts of ‘China’ and the ‘Periphery’* (2017). He draws extensively on traditional texts and visual materials and is committed to discovering and interpreting travel writings from Korea, Vietnam, and other countries. Professor Ge emphasizes the methodology of “viewing China from the periphery,” using external perspectives to reconsider the complex relationships between China and its neighboring countries and regions, clarifying the historical evolution and different connotations of the concept of “China.” This research paradigm has led new directions in historical studies over the past decade.
In religious studies, Professor Ge has made extensive contributions to the study of Buddhism, Daoism, and even folk religions. Through classic works such as *Chan Buddhism and Chinese Culture*, *Daoism and Chinese Culture*, *A History of Chinese Chan Thought: From the Sixth to the Ninth Century*, and *A History of Submission and Other Essays: A Study of the Intellectual History of Daoism in the Six Dynasties, Sui, and Tang*, he incisively analyzes the evolution of medieval Buddhism in China and explores the appeal of Chan Buddhism to the scholar-official class. Traditional intellectual history often overlooks the influence of folk beliefs, but Professor Ge, from a religious standpoint, elucidates how early Daoist development succumbed to political norms and Buddhist forces, presenting the richness and diversity of Chinese thought from a perspective distinct from mainstream research.
With a background in Classical Philology from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University, Professor Ge has also long cultivated research in Chinese literary and art history, as well as visual history. Refusing to be confined by the disciplinary divisions of modern Western academia, he founded the National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Fudan University, dedicated to promoting cross-disciplinary exchange among traditional fields such as literature, history, philosophy, religion, and art.
What is most remarkable about Professor Ge Zhaoguang is his mastery of both ancient and modern knowledge, as well as Chinese and foreign scholarship, successfully bridging the boundaries of traditional disciplines like literature, history, philosophy, religion, and art. With solid philological foundations and interdisciplinary methods, he has reshaped the history of Chinese thought and religion, significantly deepening the understanding of Chinese culture in both Chinese and foreign academic circles. His works have been widely translated into English, Japanese, Korean, German, French, and other languages. His academic influence not only reshapes international understanding of Chinese thought and culture but also opens new paths for younger generations of scholars to cross disciplinary boundaries.