He is visiting scholar at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University.
[1][2] Wu was born and raised in Datong Town of Tongling County, Anhui.
After the Cultural Revolution, he entered Peking University, majoring in economics.
In 1989, during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, he was arrested by the Beijing Public Security Bureau and put in Qincheng Prison.
In 2000, he became a visiting scholar at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University.