Welcome! My name is Jack Zhang. I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Kansas (KU). I received my Ph.D. from the University of California San Diego (UCSD). I was a Wilson China Fellow at the Wilson Center in 2021-2022 and a postdoctoral research fellow in the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University in 2018-2019. My research explores the political economy of trade and conflict in East Asia.

My dissertation seeks to explain why China seems to be engaging in more militarized disputes with its neighbors and trade partners despite deepening economic integration. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork and original data on Chinese foreign policy behavior, I show that economic interdependence fails to constrain conflicts short of war and may even incentivize calibrated uses of military force, against which revoking trade would not be a credible response.

My research and teaching interests include international political economy, international security, foreign policy analysis, Chinese foreign policy, and U.S.-China relations. My research has been supported by the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, the Minerva Research Initiative, the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

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