Personal Profile

Research Interest

His research interests include the history of the 20th century, Media history and Media archaeology; Soviet cosmology; Object-oriented media studies, Information Society, East Asia studies, and labor studies.

He has long been involved in advanced studies in media-centered humanities, social sciences, and artistic works. In recent years, he focused on the understanding of the historical paths, knowledge types and social consequences of the info-tech in the twentieth century. Hence, his research engages in muti-dimension issues, such as cybernetics, internet history, computing technology, sci-fi, digital games, geography of industry and agriculture, digital worker and labor, artificial intelligence and big data, space politics of culture and city, fandom, fan economy and digital nationalism. Moreover, he is a pioneering explorer in the understanding of the relationship between information technology and Chinese socialism path. He is working on a book, Machine for a Long Revolution: Computer as the Nexus of Technology and Class Politics in China 1955-1984.

He is the founder of Beijing Media Group and Game Manual , and served as a reviewer for multiple art projects and film awards.

Selected Publications

SelectedEnglishPublications:

Wang Hongzhe. Five Moments in the History of Chinese Cybernetics. In Machine Decision Is Not Final: China and the History and Future of Artificial Intelligence, Edited by Benjamin H. Bratton, Anna Greenspan and Bogna Konior, Urbanomic, 2025（MIT Press Reader Featured Article Nov 3，2025，https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/five-moments-in-the-history-of-chinese-cybernetics/ ）

Hongzhe Wang, Changwen Chen.(2025). From “barefoot electrician” to “electronic supervisor”: technology and labor politics in the information industry of China. The Handbook of Digital Labor. International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR)’s Global Handbooks in Media & Communication Research Series. Edited by Jack Linchuan Qiu, Shinjoung Yeo and Richard Maxwell, Wiley-Blackwell, 2025

Zhang W., Tang W., Yu T. y Wang H. (2023). From hand-held radio to ride-hailing platforms: Research on a local technical network of taxi drivers in China. Teknokultura. Revista de Cultura Digital y Movimientos Sociales, 20(Special Issue), 67-78. https://doi.org/10.5209/tekn.87492

Gianluigi Negro and Wang Hongzhe. 2022. Computing the New China. The Founding Fathers, the Maoist Way, and Neoliberalism, 1945–1986. Prophets of Computing: Visions of Society Transformed by Computing (1st ed.). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 247–278. https://doi.org/10.1145/3548585.3548594

WANG Hongzhe, The Watershed, Network, and Revolutionary Waters, edited by Filipa Ramos, *Flow: Bodies of Water—A Reader* (English-Chinese bilingual publication), Les Presses du réel, July 2021.

Jack Linchuan Qiu & Hongzhe Wang (2021) Radical praxis of computing in the PRC: forgotten stories from the maoist to post-Mao era, Internet Histories, 5:3-4, 214-229， DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2021.1949817

WANG Hongzhe & JIANG Yuan. (2019). Seeking for a Cybernetic Socialism: Qian Xuesen and the Transformation of Information Politics in Socialist China, CAC Editorial, (1) Resurrecting Cybernetics, pp.121-151.

Wu, J., Li, S., & Wang, H. (2019). From Fans to “Little Pink”: The production and mobilization mechanism of national identity under new media commercial culture. In From Cyber-Nationalism to Fandom Nationalism (pp. 32-52). London: Routledge.

Jack Linchuan Qiu & Hongzhe Wang (2012). Working-class Cultural Spaces: Comparing the Old and the New. In Beatriz Carrillo and David S.G. Goodman (Eds.), China’s Peasants and Workers: Changing Class Identities. UK: Edward Elgar.