Research Fellows
The Centre appoints Research Fellows, who are scholars in New Zealand with an active interest in contemporary China research and who make contributions to the Centre's programmes and projects. Research fellows lead and coordinate individual research projects.
Dr Hongzhi Gao, Research Fellow
Dr Hongzhi Gao is senior research fellow at the Centre, with a research interest in international marketing and business. Before coming to New Zealand, Dr Gao was as a chief analyst of foreign loans and risk management for Jilin Provincial Government in China. He was responsible for a number of international projects funded by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and governments of different countries. Dr Gao received a New Zealand Postgraduate Study Abroad Award in 2005 and the Early Career Researcher award from the Marketing Department of Otago University in 2007. He was the recipient of the Emerging Researcher Grant from the Asia New Zealand Foundation in 2008.
Dr Gao’s publications appear in a number of highly-regarded business journals including Long Range Planning, Journal of World Business, Journal of International Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, European Management Journal. His current interests regarding China include guanxi gatekeeping in Chinese-Western business relationships, corporate response strategies in food safety crises in China, branding and value co-creation in social media in China.
Phone: +64 4 463 6914
Email: hongzhi.gao@vuw.ac.nz
Office: Room 1125 Level 11, Rutherford House 23
Sam Chetwin George, Non-Resident Fellow
Sam Chetwin George is a New Zealand writer, researcher, and geopolitical advisor. He is a Senior Fellow at the Asia Society's Center on U.S.–China Relations in New York City, where he studies contemporary Chinese affairs through the lens of Party history and ideology.
He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington, Editor of the English-language edition of the journal Humanities China (《人文中国》), and a Research Fellow at China Heritage, where he collaborates with Emeritus Professor Geremie R. Barmé to document and interpret Chinese intellectual and political history. Previously, he served as Director of China Research at a leading global geopolitical advisory firm, advising institutional investors, global corporations, and government officials on China's political economy.
A New Zealand Prime Minister's Scholar, his writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, and The China Story Yearbook, and he has been featured on podcasts including CSIS's Pekingology and Radio New Zealand's The Detail. He holds a B.A. (First Class Honours) from the University of Oxford and an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University, where he wrote a thesis on Chinese techno-nationalism. He is a specialist in interpreting formal Party-state discourse and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.