Research

Publications

Samantha Vortherms and Jiakun J. Zhang, "Political Risk and Firm Exit: Evidence from the US-China Trade War." Review of International Political Economy (2024)

Zhang, Jiakun J., and Spencer Shanks, "Measuring Chinese Economic Sanctions 1949-2020: Introducing the China TIES Dataset." Conflict Management and Peace Science (2024). 

Rigao Liu, Haruka Nagao, William Hatungimana, Jiakun J. Zhang, and John Kennedy, "The Politics of Flu Vaccines: International Collaboration and Political Partisanship." Japanese Journal of Political Science (2024). 

Zhang, Jiakun J. and Spencer Shanks, "Disentangling Perception and Performance: A Natural Experiment on Student Engagement and Learning in Simulations." Journal of Political Science Education (2023).

Zhang, Jiakun J., Rigao Liu, and Samantha Vortherms, "In the Middle: American Multinationals in China and Trade War Politics" Business and Politics (2022).

Kuk, Seungmin J., Deborah Seligsohn, and Jiakun J. Zhang, “The Partisan Divide in U.S. Congressional Communications after the China Shock.” Economics and Politics (2022). 

Zhang, Jiakun Jack. “Business, Lobbyists, and the U.S. Congress.” In The Political Logic of the U.S.-China Trade War, edited by Shiping Hua. (Lexington Books, 2021).

Zhang, Jiakun Jack. “US-China Trade War: Interest Group Politics.” In Research Handbook on Trade Wars, edited by Ka Zeng. (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021).

Zhang, Jiakun J., Seungmin J. Kuk, and Deborah Seligsohn, “From Tiananmen to Outsourcing: How Rising Import Competition Influenced Congressional Behavior Towards China.” Journal of Contemporary China (2017).

Gartzke, Erik, Shannon Carcelli, Andres Gannon, and Jiakun J. Zhang, “Signaling in Foreign Policy” in Oxford Encyclopedia of Foreign Policy Analysis, ed. Cameron Thies (Oxford University Press, 2017). 

Gartzke, Erik and Jiakun J. Zhang, “Trade and War” in Oxford Handbook on the Politics of Trade, ed. Lisa Martin (Oxford University Press, 2015). 

Dissertation

Is China an Exception to the Commercial Peace? 

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that commerce brings peace, China seems to be engaging in more militarized disputes with its neighbors and trade partners despite deepening economic integration. How does economic interdependence change a state’s propensity to wield economic and military power in foreign affairs? My dissertation explains the relationship between trade interdependence and Chinese uses of coercion in foreign policy. My research challenges an important corollary of the commercial peace literature: the idea that trade is positively associated with peace because as states become more economically interdependent, they substitute economic instruments for military force in their international disputes. I find that when states trade more, they are more likely to use military instruments rather than economic sanctions in disputes. This is because commercial linkages can tie the hands of governments from using economic coercion because of increased stakes while incentivizing brinksmanship using military coercion because of the surprisingly limited effects militarized disputes have on commerce. Viewed through this lens, the Chinese experience is not an exception to commercial peace theory, rather it enriches our current understanding by showing trade can create stability at high levels of conflict but still degrade stability at lower levels of violence. 

Working Papers

"The Local Political Economy of Firm Exit: Industrial policy and investment networks in the US-China Trade War" (with Rigao Liu and Samantha Vortherms)

As the business environment sours in China, why do some foreign investors decide to exit while others choose to stay? While international factors such as international agreements buffer firms from increased political risks in a trade war, how does the local political-economic context affect firms’ decisions to exit? Vortherms and Zhang (2021) show that the US-China trade war broadly elevated political risks for multinational corporations (MNCs) operating in China, increasing firm exit overall but not necessarily in sectors facing higher tariffs. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the domestic political economy on MNC exits after the outbreak of the trade war. Specifically, we test two concurrent hypotheses: local industrial policies and investment agglomeration. We argue that local officials use protective policies to undercut the costs introduced by the trade war to maintain existing foreign contracts decreases the costs of weathering the costs of the trade war. Simultaneously, networked agglomeration of foreign capital, where foreign firms are integrated in a local market of foreign capital, increases the costs of exiting. Firms both located in districts with preferential policies, such as economic development zones, and integrated with locally-networked foreign capital will be the least likely to exit. We add to existing studies of comparative political economy of foreign investment by adding highly detailed political geography variables to understand the spatial variation in firm exits during the unprecedented trade war between the US and China.

"A Field Experiment on Business Opposition to the U.S.-China Trade War" (with Lindsay Dolan, Robert Kubinec, and Daniel Nielson)

The United States’ trade war with China proved to be detrimental to a wide swath of U.S. companies, but only a handful of well-connected firms pursued vigorous political action to oppose it. To better understand the constraints to corporate political action, we implemented a field experiment targeted at managers of U.S.-based firms in which we randomly provided original estimates of the costs of the trade war to their industry and company and then measured their willingness to take actions either opposing or supporting the trade war. We find that on the whole, U.S. companies that receive information about the rise in input costs from tariffs are less likely to take political action opposing the trade war, though this effect is highly conditional on respondents’ pre-existing beliefs. Respondents who believed the trade war was harmful yet had little information about their own firm’s prospects were the most likely to oppose the trade war after receiving the treatment. By contrast, very knowledgeable companies who believed the trade war was helpful were more likely to support the trade war following treatment, possibly because they feared the treatment would induce political mobilization. Finally, we find that partisan affiliation of the company’s managers was as strong a predictor of support for or against the trade war as was the company’s own vulnerability to tariff-related cost increases, suggesting that partisanship strongly shaped pre-existing beliefs. 

"Determinants of China Policy Entrepreneurship in the United States Senate (1989-2020)" (with Spencer Shanks)

The United States Senate has played an increasingly active role in shaping foreign policy towards China. The need to be 'tough on China' is one of the few issues Republicans and Democrats in Congress today can agree on. We compiled the first comprehensive dataset of 1,479 China-focused Senate resolutions from 1989 to 2020 and show that between 9 percent and 49 percent of Senators sponsor at least one China-related resolution annually. We use this new dataset to explore various political drivers of Senatorial foreign policy activism toward China. Sponsorship of China bills is not driven by traditional state-level economic factors such as import exposure and export dependence or explained by the traditional hawk-dove dichotomy. We find some support that institutional factors such as seniority and committee membership account for some of the variation of activity among Senators. But the senator's presidential aspirations is the most robust predictor of his or her level of activism on China policy. We argue that 'tough on China' is an ideal issue for Senators trying to advance their future political careers. It is a high-profile foreign policy position that benefits from the cover of bipartisan support and one where there are no immediate consequences to the sponsoring senator. 

"Does China's Anti-Monopoly Law Discriminate Against Foreign Firms?" (with Yingjie Jessica Fan) 

Since China’s anti-monopoly law (AML) came into effect in 2008, foreign companies have alleged that they are being disproportionately targeted by enforcement authorities. Yet Chinese regulators have denied anti-foreign bias and insist that all are equal before the law. This paper represents the first effort to systematically study AML enforcement patterns using a new dataset of AML cases. We collected data on some 1832 cases from the three anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies (MOFCOM, NDRC, and SAIC), of which 61% involved at least one foreign firm. We examine whether the imposition of fines and conditionalities disproportionately target foreign firms, controlling for firm size and industry. It draws a distinction between instrumental (whether the timing of investigations and nationality of firms correspond to diplomatic disputes) and structural (whether investigations correspond to strategic emerging industries and concentration of state-owned enterprises) anti-foreign bias in AML enforcement. In doing so, the paper attempts to inject evidence into a debate over how Washington or Beijing should respond to growing dissatisfaction among many foreign businesses in China.

"Tying the Invisible Hand of Peace: Why Trading States Still Choose to Fight" 

The commercial peace literature identifies a universal pattern that commerce reduces conflict but a growing literature finds that the pattern of war and peace differ across world regions. This paper argues that the relationship between trade and conflict is spurious due to regional differences in entry into the Correlates of War (COW) state-membership data. The empirical analysis of the commercial peace literature relies on COW data (1948-2000). Yet the resolution of the WWII and the subsequent Cold War created very different patterns of trade and conflict in different parts of the world. In Europe, WWII settled borders and the Marshall Plan stimulated intraregional trade, but in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, the end of WWII marked the collapse of colonial empires and ushered in a wave of new territorial disputes. Meanwhile, decolonization brought into power governments that were often hostile towards the commercial interests of its former colonial master, dampening trade and investment. But, as a product of Cold War rivalries, U.S. aid and investment catalyzed trade in Asia despite the lack of security integration. As a result, regions with high trade (Europe) in the COW data don't experience militarized disputes as often as regions that have disputed territories (Middle East, Africa), which have low trade. Asia is a mixed case with high territorial disputes as well as high trade and investment. The commercial peace finding is spurious because the mode of state-entry in the COW dataset means that some states are ‘born’ with territorial disputes and an increased risk of militarized conflicts and reduced trade compared to others.