Xiangli Ding

Xiangli Ding is a historian of modern China and environmental history. He teaches courses on East Asian history, modern China, environment and power in East Asia, Chinese history through films, and the history of Sino-US relations. He believes that his mission as a teacher-scholar is to bridge past and present and shed light on cultural and political differences.

His research interests lie at the intersection of the environment, technology, politics, and human life in the Chinese past. His first book, Hydropower Nation: Dams, Energy, and Political Changes in Twentieth-Century China (Cambridge University Press, 2024), provides a historical understanding of China’s ever-growing energy demands and how they have affected its rivers, wild species, and millions of residents. River management has been an essential state responsibility throughout Chinese history. In the industrial age, with the global proliferation of concrete dam technology, people started to demand more from rivers, particularly when required for electricity production. Yet hydropower projects are always more than a technological engineering enterprise, layered with political, social, and environmental meaning. Through an examination of specific hydroelectric power projects, the activities of engineers, and the experience of local communities and species, the book offers a fresh perspective on 20th-century China from environmental and technological perspectives. His current project explores the environmental and social history of the Dongting Plain in the central Yangtze basin.