Wen Yuankai (Chinese: 温元凯; born 1946) is a Chinese scholar, social activist and financial investor.^[1][2][3] He was a prominent figure during the New Enlightenment movement in mainland China in the 1980s, actively supporting the "Reform and Opening" as a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China.^[1][3][4][5] He also served as a deputy director of the Anhui Provincial Department of Education.^[3][4] Wen shifted his focus to financial investment in the 1990s and founded his own consulting firm in China.^[1][3]

Wen Yuankai was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu in 1946.^[1] He attended Nanjing University and studied chemistry, but was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution while in college.^[4] After graduation in 1968, he was sent to work at a plastic factory in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, where he joined the Chinese Communist Party.^[1][4] In the summer of 1973, he received recommendations and began working at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC).^[4] In 1977, at the beginning of the Boluan Fanzheng period, he made a suggestion to Deng Xiaoping to resume the National College Entrance Examination which was cancelled during the decade of Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).^[1][4][6]

In 1980, he went to France and spent some time studying quantum biology.^[1][4] After returning to China, Wen became an active leader in promoting the Chinese economic reform and thought liberation as a professor at the USTC, primarily by giving lectures at hundreds of universities, publishing books on the reforms of China, and so on.^{[1][7][8][9][10]}

In 1992, he became a visiting scholar at the California Institute of Technology in the United States, but soon shifted his focus to finance and began working at Wall Street in 1993.^[1][4] He returned to China later and has served as the Chief Adviser of Kuaile Nongjia as well as the chairman of the Board (Training Center) for Beijing Nanyang Linde Consulting.^[1]