Endymion Wilkinson

Endymion Porter Wilkinson (born May 15, 1941) is an English diplomat, Sinologist, historian of China, and authority on East Asian affairs. He served in Beijing as the European Union Ambassador to China and Mongolia from 1994 to 2001. In 2013 he published Chinese History: A New Manual, an authoritative and often witty guide to Sinology and Chinese history for which he was awarded the Prix Stanislas Julien for 2014. A new edition (the 4th) appeared in 2015.

Wilkinson was born in the parish of Westmeston near Lewes, England and educated at Gordonstoun School and King’s College, Cambridge where he studied History and Oriental Studies (BA 1964; MA 1966). Shortly before graduation he was recruited by the Chinese government to teach English in Beijing at the Peking Institute of Languages. His two-year contract (1964–1966) ended just as the Cultural Revolution was beginning. From Beijing he went to Princeton University where he completed a PhD in 1970 under James T.C. Liu and Frederick W. Mote. This was later published as Studies in Chinese Price History.

From 1970 to 1974, Wilkinson was lecturer in the History of the Far East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (the official history of SOAS refers to him as “the most promising Sinologist of the early 1970s”). However, when he began teaching there he still felt unprepared. He did not know, he recalled many years later, what to tell his graduate students about the Zhou or Shang dynasties, about which he felt his knowledge would about "fill an eye dropper." As a research fellow at Harvard University in 1971, Wilkinson mentioned to John Fairbank, a senior Harvard scholar, that he was gathering notes on Chinese history. Fairbank offered to publish them, and the 1973 Research Guide appeared in due course. During these years he also translated two books from the Chinese: one popular (The People’s Comic Book); the other, academic (Landlord and Labor in Late Imperial China).

While on academic study leave in 1974, he was asked by the European Commission to find the building and recruit the local staff for the EU’s permanent diplomatic delegation to Japan. Shortly thereafter, he quit academe, joined the Commission's External Relations Directorate General and was posted to Tokyo as First Secretary (Economic) during the intensification of EU-Japan trade frictions (1974–1979).

In 1980 he published Gokai 誤解 (Misunderstanding). In it he examined both sides of the trade frictions coin: were Japanese successes on US and European markets due to the fact that Westerners were lazy and ignorant about Japanese markets (in sharp contrast to the Japanese who were industrious and well-informed about the West), as many Japanese argued? Or was Japan deliberately keeping its markets closed and therefore operating with an unfair advantage (as many Westerners claimed)? For a brief period in the Summer of 1980 the book became the number one non-fiction best seller in Japan. It was also made into a four-hour TV documentary by TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System). The series was presented by Wilkinson and featured numerous interviews, including with the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss; Eugen Loderer, Chairman of IG Metall (the Union of German Metal Workers); the movie stars Alain Delon and Keiko Kishi 岸惠子; and many others. It was broadcast in Tokyo on March 9–12, 1980 and in the rest of Japan that April. Gokai was also published in new expanded editions in English, Italian, German, Chinese, and French. By 1992 it had sold a total of 250,000 copies. The book was well received not only in Japan but also in Europe and America: "This wry history of how each side has caricatured the other serves as an introduction to the topic which dominates relations today: trade. Neither side gets off lightly" wrote the Economist reviewer. The editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jürgen Eicke suggested the book was "Essential for everyone in economic circles who has any contact with Japan.""Both well-informed and witty..." wrote Claude Levi-Strauss, "I learned a great deal from it and it gave me food for thought too."James Fallows, writing in the New York Review of Books, skipped the economic arguments and while praising Wilkinson's discussion of Japanese and Western images of each other, objected that his approach "pushes him toward the bizarre position of implying that the more often foreigners have observed a certain trait about Japan, the more likely it is to be false, not true."

In 1975 Wilkinson was sent by the European Commission to Beijing to make preparations for and participate in the talks between Christopher Soames and Zhou Enlai leading to the establishment of EU-China diplomatic relations. Wilkinson later served as head of the China desk in Brussels (1979–1982) and took part in many official talks in Beijing with China’s most senior leaders. In 1981 he produced the blueprint for the forerunner of the China Europe International Business School. Between 1982 and 1987 he was DCM in the EU’s Bangkok Delegation (covering most of the Southeast Asian countries). Before becoming a director of the European Commission and his appointment as EU Ambassador to China in 1994, Wilkinson served as head of the Southeast Asia and Asia divisions in the Commission (1988–1994). Among his activities at this time was the launch of a $100 million program to provide loans to 170,000 Vietnamese boat people refugees to enable them to start businesses on returning to Vietnam.

As ambassador to China Wilkinson proposed and later oversaw the switching of the focus of EU grant aid to China from agricultural projects (notably the development of dairy farming) to all forms of education (notably the founding of the China Europe International Business School [CEIBS] in Shanghai [中欧国际工商学院;]). During his seven years as ambassador EU grant aid to China increased very substantially (to 250 million euro). Wilkinson also served as the deputy head under Pascal Lamy of the European Commission negotiating team for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

After taking early retirement from the European Commission in 2001 Wilkinson lectured at Harvard (2001-2006), at Tsinghua University (2005), and at Peking University (2011–12). He has also been a visiting Professor at Chinese Language and Culture University (1999-), and at Peking University (2001-2004; 2006-2014). He is currently an Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center, Harvard (2006-).

His main publications from 1998 have been progressive updatings and expansions of his manual of Chinese history. Since the publication of the preliminary edition (titled Research Guide) in 1973, some 18,000 copies have been sold making this the best selling and longest selling work in the Harvard-Yenching Monograph Series. The most recent edition, Chinese History: A New Manual (4th edition) by its size (over 1.5 million words) and by its scope far surpasses previous editions. The University of British Columbia historian of China Carla Nappi judged it, “in every way, absolutely indispensable to work in Chinese history.” Jonathan Mirsky, writing in the New York Review of Books called it an "unparalleled collection of Chinese facts and analysis, reaching from the earliest recorded times to the late twentieth century..." and continued, "It comprises fourteen supremely learned ‘book‐length parts’ in seventy‐six chapters, including entries on language, people, geography, and the environment, on ideas and beliefs, and on technology and science... [A] mighty book... Magnificent."

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Wilkinson has delivered more than 300 speeches on East and Southeast Asian current affairs at UN and other international fora. In addition he has also lectured in many of the world’s leading universities. Since 2001 he has preferred to incorporate his research results into his book Chinese History: A New Manual rather than publish them separately. A few exceptions are shown below.