Meet HSS Faculty | Department of China Studies

Dr Ashton Ng

Career

Hey there, I’m Ashton!
Having had my formative experiences in various places (Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Edinburgh), I’ve grown to become deeply interested in how people live in different cultures across different time periods. This interest led me to study Chinese literature at Peking University and comparative history at Oxford and Cambridge.

Modules & Teaching

CCS004 Introduction to China Studies
CCS101 Chinese Civilization: Thinkers and Ideas
HSS101 AI for Humanities and Social Sciences
CCS112 Modern Chinese in Socio-Historical Perspective

My favourite is the newly revamped CCS101 (Chinese Civilization: Thinkers and Ideas), where students spend more time discussing philosophy than listening to me talk. Each week, we compare one Chinese thinker with a Western counterpart: Confucius with Socrates, Mencius with Rousseau, Xunzi with Hobbes, Sunzi with Clausewitz, Laozi with Heraclitus, Zhuangzi with Montaigne, and Han Feizi with Machiavelli.

My teaching session focuses on DISCUSSION. My classes are always filled with dialogue and debate. I narrate the life stories of important thinkers and the central questions they grappled with; for instance, Socrates and Confucius on governance, self-awareness, intellectual inquiry, wealth and status, and life’s adversities and purpose. Then, students discuss their own life experiences in small groups for a few minutes before some brave volunteers share their views with the class.

Research

His main research interest are history and political thought. As an undergraduate, he used to enjoy traditional Chinese philology (训诂), which means scrutinising every word in a classical text. In graduate school, he became much more interested in the history of ideas in China and the West.

He looks at what people spend most of their time doing—building wealth and status, outsmarting competitors, seeking meaning—and then search history for relevant lessons and insights.

He regularly contributes newspaper commentaries on societal issues and US-China relations. He always writes to be understood by the intelligent public.