caption birth_place imagesize nationality birth_date spouse genre image article_title name occupation
shen zhihua beijing , china 200px chinese april 1950 li danhui history shen zhihua , 2009.jpg shen zhihua
 shen zhihua university professor
shen zhihua

shen zhihua -lrb- ; born april 1950 in beijing -rrb- is a professor of history at east china normal university and adjunct professor at peking university and renmin university of china .
shen is an expert in the history of the soviet union , sino-soviet relations , and the cold war .
he is director of the center for oriental history studies of the chinese academy of sciences and honorary researcher at the chinese university of hong kong .
in 2011 shen was public policy scholar at the woodrow wilson international center for scholars in washington , d.c. .
in the early 1980s , when shen was a graduate student in world history at the chinese academy of social sciences , he was sent to jail and forced to abandon his studies in a politically inspired incident .
shen went into private business , but eventually returned to beijing , where he set up a private research organization , `` zhongguo shixuehui dongfang lishi yanjiu zhongxin '' -lrb- center for oriental history studies , chinese historical association -rrb- , in 1993 .
this organization has been extremely productive , helping to publish more than 80 books and monographs and hosting many conferences and scholarly activities , especially in soviet history and sino-soviet relations .
shen and li danhui , his wife , are known for their generosity to chinese and foreign scholars , and shen spent his own money to finance research visits to moscow for research groups to collect photocopies of archival materials .
shen has published more than 60 articles and eight monographs , edited five books , and was the chief editor of pioneering documentary collections on soviet foreign policy and the korean war .
andrew nathan of columbia university said shen is `` highly regarded '' in china for `` nuanced histories of key episodes in the cold war , '' which form `` a solid contribution to the field of cold war international history '' and that his work belongs to `` a wave of independent chinese scholarship that demystifies china 's role in the conflict by showing the country to be a self-interested state like any other . ''
