Wang Huning's ancestry is traced back to Shandong Province. Wang Huning was born in 1955 to a revolutionary cadre family in Shanghai, where he spent most of his life

before being drafted into the Beijing leadership at the age of 40. As a military officer, Wang Huning’s father was implicated in Mao’s campaign against Marshall Peng Dehuai

in 1959 and subsequently suffered persecution during the decade-long Cultural Revolution starting from 1966, when Huning was a teenager. A quiet and introverted boy, Wang Huning developed a penchant for reading. As intellectuals were downtrodden and academic pursuits frowned upon during the Cultural Revolution, books were in short supply, apart from a limited list of officially sanctioned items including Mao’s little red book and primers on Marxism. Wang managed to obtain extracurricular books, including banned items of foreign literary classics, from his teachers at Shanghai Yongqiang School, who were touched by his thirst for knowledge.

After graduating from high school in 1972, he became an apprentice worker (xuetugong) for nearly three years. Being a sickly youngster, he partly escaped the fate of being sent ‘up to the mountains and down to the countryside’ (shang shan xia xiang), along with most other urban school-leavers of the time, as required by Mao’s campaign in the 1960s and 1970s to subject school-educated urban youths to re-education by the peasants. Instead, Wang spent some time in the rural areas near Shanghai and attended a foreign language training program at Shanghai Normal University (later renamed East China Normal University), where he studied for several years, majoring in French. After completing this training program in 1977, he worked for a year in the Shanghai News and Publication Bureau before a major turning point occurred in his life.In 1978, with the launch of Deng’s reforms after the end of the destructive Cultural Revolution,Wang was among the first to take advantage of the revival of China’s university system by participating and distinguishing himself in the highly competitive university entrance examinations (Gaokao). Although his training program at East China Normal University was not sufficient to qualify him with a bachelor’s degree, his Gaokao performance was so impressive that he was accepted directly into the very competitive master’s program in international politics at Fudan University in Shanghai.His main supervisor there was Chen Qiren, a renowned authority on Marx’s works, especially Das Kapital, which may account for the title of Wang’s dissertation, ‘From Bodin to Maritain: On Sovereignty Theories

Developed by the Western Bourgeoisie’.After completing his master’s degree with distinction, Wang was retained as teaching staff, taking courses others did not enjoy teaching and developing new ones in response to rapid growth of the curriculum in the burgeoning reform era. He published widely, both in academic journals and in newspapers and magazines read by the educated elite. His classes were popular and well attended. He enjoyed casual dress and simple food and appeared easy-going and approachable to staff and students.

 

While studying at Fudan, Wang met Zhou Qi, a fellow student of international politics, who also proved to be a competent scholar, subsequently recruited by the university as a teacher after graduation and later to become his first wife. Their love life was depicted as one between two philosophical pedants, devoid of fun and romance, with both burying themselves in their own reading when alone in their cramped dormitory, occasionally locking horns with each other over topics they both felt strongly about. 

Wang Huning’s dedication to his academic pursuits and his down-to-earth style, as well as his growing list of publications, did not go unnoticed by his superiors, who offered to recommend him for accelerated promotion. Wang initially tried to decline their offers, saying that he was still young with much to learn. In a similar vein, he had declined the offer of a bigger apartment by the university, saying that other people needed it more. At any rate, in 1985 when he had barely turned 30, Wang was promoted to Associate Professor without having to first serve as lecturer, thus becoming the youngest ever professor at Fudan. Within three years, he was made a full professor and went on to become Head of the Law School before being headhunted by the Beijing leadership.

 

His growing reputation attracted serious attention from the upper echelon of the Shanghai municipal government, including Zeng Qinghong and Wu Bangguo, who were both close to President Jiang Zemin and went on to become top national leaders. Jiang Zemin called an initially reluctant Wang Huning to Beijing, thus starting a new chapter in Wang’s life and career.

 

Although Jiang had never met Wang until then, he had already heard much about Wang and read his works. It was reported that when they first met, Jiang joked by saying to Wang, ‘if you still don’t come to Beijing, these people (referring to members of the “Shanghai Gang”, like Zeng and Wu) will fall out with me’ (如果你再不进京,这一帮人可要跟我闹翻了). Jiang went on to quote passages from Wang’s books, much to Wang’s pleasant surprise.

 

Wang started in Beijing by serving as the head of the politics group in the Central Policy Research Office, which is a key organ of the Central Committee of the CCP, responsible for providing policy recommendations, developing Party ideology, and drafting Party documents and leaders’ speeches. Within three years, he was promoted to Deputy Director of the Research Office. In 2002, at the 16th Party Congress that saw the transition from Jiang’s reign to the Hu Jintao era, Wang became a member of the Central Committee, the body bringing together the top 200-odd members of the Party. He was also made Director of the Central Policy Research Office, equivalent in rank to that of a government minister but more centrally located in the political hierarchy. During Hu Jintao’s leadership, Wang’s lucky star continued to rise and, at the 17th Party Congress in 2007, he edged a step closer to the inner sanctum of power by becoming a member of the influential Central Secretariat of the Party while still

retaining his directorship of the Research Office. In 2012, at the 18th Party Congress that marked the handover of power from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping,Wang succeeded in entering the Political Bureau (Politburo). He was thus transformed in status, from one of 204 members of the Party Central Committee, to one of 25 of the Politburo, the core of the Chinese leadership.The change of top leaders did not adversely affect Wang’s fortunes, as it did many others, but actually enhanced his standing. Wherever President Xi Jinping travelled, either domestically or overseas, Wang was part of the entourage, as he had been during the previous two administrations under Jiang and Hu, all of which had been widely publicized in China’s national media.Xi has made Wang a crucial member of his inner circle, as the de facto National Security Advisor and as a key member of the Leading Group for Deepening Reforms, which is chaired by Xi himself. Wang Huning was promoted as member of the PBSC at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017.