I am an Associate Professor of Political Science at Peking University, and a faculty associate at Peking University Research Center for Contemporary China. My primary research and teaching interests lie in comparative political institutions, political economy of development, and Chinese politics.
My research addresses the questions of power-sharing among political elites both with and without the constraints of formal political institutions and how elite interactions, in turn, shape policy outcomes. My first book, Localized Bargaining (Oxford University Press, 2022), examines how intergovernmental bargaining, particularly those by local governments, shape China’s high-speed railway program, one of the largest infrastructure projects in human history.
In addition to elite politics and political institutions, I am also working on topics including the political and economic implications of weak property rights institutions, and state-society relationship. My work has appeared in outlets such as Comparative Political Studies, Political Communication, Security Studies, Studies in Comparative and International Development, World Development, and China Quarterly. I, along with my coauthor, also collect and maintain a biographical database on the past and present members of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee.
I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Washington.