Wu Li, born in Beijing in 1956, is the Deputy Director and a researcher of the Institute of Contemporary China Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a doctoral supervisor of the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Vice President of the Chinese Economic History Society as well as the Chairman of the professional committee of China's Modern Economic History, Vice President of the Society of Chinese Commercial History.

Research interests: Economic history of the People's Republic of China.

From 1977 to 1981, he studied at the Department of History of Beijing Normal University and obtained a bachelor's degree in history; from 1981 to 1984, he studied at the Department of the History of Chinese Communist Party at Renmin University of China and obtained a master's degree in law; from December 1984 to October 2008, he studied at the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and engaged in the research of Chinese modern economic history. He has successively been an assistant researcher, associate researcher, researcher, deputy director, director of the China Modern Economic History Research Office, a member of the Institute's academic committee, and a leader of key disciplines of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In 1997, he was a visiting scholar at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Since October 2008, he has worked in the Institute of Contemporary China Studies. He has participated in and presided over a number of National Social Science Fund projects, international cooperation projects and key projects of the Institute.

Main academic achievements: He has edited a number ofEconomic profiles of the People's Republic of China; his main representative works areThe Economic History of the People's Republic of China(chief editor),The Spirit of China in 1956(monograph),Major Events Since China's Reform and Opening Up(chief editor), Volume I of theEconomic History of the People's Republic of China(co-authored),The Road to Solve the "Three Rural Issues"-History of the CPC's Thought and Policy of" Three Rural Issues"(chief editor),Research Report on China's Ten Five-Year Plans(co-authored),Research on the Economic Development of Contemporary China and the Communist Party of China(monograph),The Way from the Model of Southern Jiangsu to Sustainable Development(chief editor) ; Key textbooks of the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences:The Economic History of the People's Republic of China(chief editor) and so on.