Merle Goldman, an historian at Boston University, widely considered one of the world’s leading analysts of Chinese politics, died Nov. 16 at her home in Cambridge, MA. She was 92.

Dr. Goldman’s specialty was the politics of dissent in modern China, a topic that gave her a unique perspective on the country’s seismic changes under Communism. She wrote books, book reviews and opinion articles that were required reading for government and opinion leaders.

She and her husband, Marshall Goldman secured teaching positions in the Boston area — he at Wellesley College, where he specialized in the Soviet economy and she at Boston University, where she taught from 1972 to 2001. She worked at Harvard’s Fairbank Center until 2014.

Their extensive knowledge of their respective subject countries, as well as their ability to trade on each other’s insights, made them frequent advisers to politicians and business leaders.

“We don’t argue about the children,” Dr. Goldman told The Boston Globe in 1988. “We argue about the significance of Confucius.”