He is a physicist by training, is a professor of international relations at Fudan University.He is the founder and director of China's first non-government-based Program on Arms Control and Regional Security at Fudan University.
Dr. Shen teaches at Fudan University graduate courses “Nonproliferation andInternational Security”, “Science/Technology and National Security”, as well asdoctoral courses “International Security: Theory and Practice”, and “RegionalSecurity”. He co-teaches undergraduate courses, “China and the World”, and “ContemporaryAmerica”, at Fudan. He has taught China’s foreign policies at Colorado Collegesince 2002.
His research areas cover China-U.S. security relationship, nuclear arms control and disarmament, nuclear weapons policy of the United States and China, regional nonproliferation issues concerning South Asia, Northeast Asia and Middle East, test ban, missile defense, export control, as well as China’s foreign and defense policies. He has co-edited “China’s Development Report”, “China and South Asian Relations in the 1990s”, “Conservatism and American Foreign Policy”, “Realism and U.S. Foreign Policy” and published over 500 articles and papers, 1/2 of which abroad in a dozen foreign languages. In addition, he has published over 20 papers in physics in China and abroad.
Asa key independent academic voice in China in arms control and nonproliferation, Dr. Shen has been invited to numerous conferences at home and abroad. Also, among three dozens of international conferences he has organized, The Shanghai Dialogue (or Shanghai Initiative), ahigh level track-II series of meetings since 1994 involving China, India, Pakistan and the United States, has been viewed as one of the most important multilateral unofficial talks on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation involving these countries.
Dr.Shen is a member of IISS and a number of other international organizations. He is on the editorial board of Contemporary Asia-Pacific Studies (China), South Asia Studies (China), Fudan Journal Social Sciences Edition (China), Journal of Contemporary China (U.S.), Journal of East Asian Studies (ROK/Japan/Taiwan), IRI Journal (ROK), INESAP Information Bulletin (Germany), and Nonproliferation Literature Review (U.S.), as well as on the international advisory board of Regional Studies (Pakistan). Dr. Shen also provides consulting service to China’s MFA, MOFCOM etc. In January 2002 he was invited by Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan to advise SG of the strategy panning for his second term, as the sole Chinese out of 40 persons chosen worldwide.