After growing up in a remote village in inner southern China, Jing-Bao Nie was trained in Chinese medicine in China, sociology in Canada, and medical humanities in the US. He has been an adjunct professor at Peking University and an associate of the Harvard University Asia Center, and is a Fellow of the Hastings Center for Bioethics. He is a member of the Working Group on Developing WHO Guidance on Clinical Ethics.

Nie is a leading scholar in global bioethics, with over 150 peer-reviewed publications. His books include Medical Ethics in China, Behind the Silence: Chinese Voices on Abortion, and Japan’s Wartime Medical Atrocities. His articles have appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Bioethics, Developing World Bioethics, Asian Bioethics Review, The Lancet, and Nature. Nie’s distinctive theoretical and methodological approach is called “ethical transculturalism.” He has delivered over 100 keynote and other invited addresses at international conferences and universities worldwide. Media outlets that have cited or featured him include Nanfang Zhoumo (China), Radio France, Australian National Radio, The Guardian, Nature news, Science news, STAT news, CNN Health, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times.

Nie is currently completing his latest book, Confucian Ethics vs. Biomilitarism. His project at SCAS examines authoritarian biopolitics, as it relates to the one-child to three-child policy, yousheng (eugenics), and human genome editing in China within a global context, from a transcultural socio-ethical approach.

Nie’s hobbies in recent years include running cross-country half-marathons weekly in the awe-inspiring landscapes of Aotearoa, New Zealand, and elsewhere (soon in Sweden).

Jing-Bao Nie is in residence in the autumn of 2025.
This information is accurate as of the academic year 2025-26.