Statebuilding in the PRC dataset project

(in collaboration with Jingyuan Qian, assistant professor of political science, Boston College)

How did the Chinese Communist Party transition from a revolutionary organization into a builder of a strong state? This project seeks to understand the state formation of the People's Republic of China, through the lens of state capacity, party building, and social mobilization at the subnational level. Using publicly-available local histories and state archives from China, we are currently constructing a comprehensive dataset in order to uncover the institutional origins of the PRC state.