I teach comparative politics, authoritarian politics, and comparative judicial institutions. In Politics in China and Japan (POLS 454), students use research and primary sources to evaluate competing explanations and develop arguments in writing. My teaching assistant experience in comparative politics and causal inference includes R and Stata labs, replication exercises, and research design. I also mentor undergraduate researchers in computational social science.
Welcome!
I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
I study authoritarian politics and relations between citizens and the state, with a focus on China.
- Law and Society
- Public Opinion, Media, and Ideology
- Political Economy
- AI-Human Interaction
My book project, Brokers of Authoritarian Legality: State, Professionals, and Law in China, examines how authoritarian governments rely on legal professionals to govern. I argue that professional autonomy makes expertise credible, while political supervision and economic dependence constrain independent political action. The book combines original fieldwork in rural China with firsthand evidence from legal aid hotlines, interviews, and experiments with citizens and lawyers.
I also study how media and ideology shape public opinion, the political economy of trade and firms, and bureaucratic politics. My work on AI examines how it interacts with political systems and social cooperation.
Research Areas
- Law and Society
- Public Opinion, Media, and Ideology
- Political Economy
- AI-Human Interaction
Education
University of California, San Diego
2026
Ph.D. Political Science
(Computational Social Science)
(Computational Social Science)
Duke University
2020
M.A. Political Science
Sun Yat-Sen University
2018
B.A. Public Administration
Research
Law and Society; Public Opinion, Media, and Ideology; Political Economy; AI-Human Interaction.
Articles
Revise & Resubmit
Working Papers
Theme:
No working papers with this tag.
Work in Progress
Law and Society
- How Markets Finance Authoritarian Cooptation of Professional Elites
- Repression and Cooptation in the Autocratic Judiciary: A Field Experiment with Chinese Lawyers
- Rule of Law or Rule by Law: Political Origins of Legislation in Autocracy
- Testing Tocqueville: Lawyers, Democracy, and the Rule of Law in Global Elections
Public Opinion, Media, and Ideology
- How Does Foreign Media Exposure Affect Authoritarian Legitimacy? A Field Experiment in China
- Social Image and Political Expression under Authoritarian Rule
- What Autocrats Know and What They Say: Evidence from China's Classified Internal Press, 1949–1964
- From Marx to the Masses: Global Diffusion and the Revision of Communism
- The Pen Against the Sword: How Wars Reshape Media Control
Political Economy
- Red Credentials: The Private Nomenklatura in China's Labor Market
- Sorting into the Authoritarian State: Civil-Service Recruitment, Candidate Psychology, and Elite Selection in China
- Strategic Non-Regulation as Industrial Policy: Evidence from Made in China 2025 Initiative
- Going Global, Hiring Local
AI-Human Interaction
- Can AI Support Critical Thinking and Political Expression under Authoritarianism?
- Does AI Mitigate or Amplify Judicial Bias? A Field Experiment with Chinese Lawyers
- Crowding Out Collaboration? Generative AI, Task Interdependence, and the Formation of Social Ties
Teaching
Contact
zzu@utk.edu
1114 McClung Tower
1115 Volunteer Boulevard
Knoxville, TN 37996, USA