Professional Affiliation

Associate Professor at Georgetown University

Expert Bio

Denise Y. Ho is associate professor in the Asian Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where she teaches the history of modern China.  She is the author of Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China, published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.  She has also served as a co-editor on a special issue and an edited volume, titled Transformation of Shen-Kong Borderlands and Material Contradictions in Mao’s China.  Her articles and reviews have appeared in The American Historical Review, The China Quarterly, Modern China, and others.  Her research interests include the social and cultural history of modern China, borderlands, urban history, and Hong Kong. 

Wilson Center Project

China’s Greater Bay Area in Historical Context

Project Summary

This project examines the historical linkages that have connected China’s Greater Bay Area, a present-day project to integrate the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau with the cities of South China. Since the nineteenth century, this area—also known as the Pearl River Delta—has been an important hub for trade, migration, and information.  Its networks, from infrastructure such as the Kowloon-Canton Railway to human connections like the diaspora, made this border area both a gateway to the interior and a window on the world.  Tracing the history of infrastructural projects from China’s post-Mao reform-era to today, this project explores the process of integration and the politics of connectivity.  It forms part of a larger book manuscript entitled The Nation’s Gate: A Cross-Border History of Hong Kong and China.