He is currently Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Malaya. He was Director of Global Planning & Strategy Centre, Universiti Malaya and former Director of the Institute of China Studies and former Head of the Malaysian Chinese Research Centre at the same university. 

He was Visiting Professor at Peking University (2018). He was also Visiting Yip (China) Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge University (2017-2018); Visiting Scholar at the Hakka College, National Central University, Taiwan (2017); and Visiting Professor at the Center for Integrated Area Studies, Kyoto University (2010). Professor Wong is a Member of the Board of Governors, Chinese Heritage Centre, Singapore and Council Member of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Member of the Board of Trustees, SEASREP Foundation, and a former Chairman of the UNESCO Southeast Asian Shared-History Textbook Technical Committee. 

Among his publications are: The Kinabalu Guerrillas and the 1943 Jesselton Uprising (2020), Chinese Studies in Malaysia and Singapore in a Global Context (2019), One Crowded Moment of Glory: The Kinabalu Guerrillas and the 1943 Jesselton Uprising (2019), The Diaries of G.C. Woolley, Vol. 1: 1901-1907 (2015); Vol. 2: 1907-1913 (2016) & Vol. 3: 1913-1919 (2018); The Chinese Overseas in Malaysia in an Era of Change (2018), Historical Sabah: The War (2010), The Nguyen and Champa during 17th and 18th Century (2007), Historical Sabah: the Chinese (2005), Historical Sabah: Community and Society (2004), The Transformation of an Immigrant Society: a Study of the Chinese of Sabah (1998).