publications
Books
2020. China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption. Cambridge University Press.
2016. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap. Cornell University Press. Cornell Studies in Political Economy.
Journal Articles
Forthcoming. “China’s Low-Productivity Innovation Drive: Evidence from Patents” (with Nan Jia, Yang Bo, and Kenneth Huang), Comparative Political Studies. Accepted 26 June 2023. [pdf]
2023. “Ambiguity and Clarity in China’s Adaptive Policy Communication,” The China Quarterly. Published online [insert date] [SSRN]
2023. “The Promise and Pitfalls of Government Guiding Funds in China” (with Yifan Wei and Nan Jia), The China Quarterly, pp. 1-21. Published online 19 April 2023. [Open-access link]
2020. “Unbundling Corruption: Revisiting Six Questions on Corruption,” Global Perspectives, April 2020. [pdf]
2020. “When COVID-19 Meets Centralized, Personalized Power.” Nature Human Behavior. [Open-access link]
2018. “Domestic Flying Geese: Industrial Transfer and Delayed Policy Diffusion in China.” The China Quarterly, Vol. 234, pp. 420-443. [pdf]
2017. “Beyond Weber: Conceptualizing an Alternative Ideal-Type of Bureaucracy in Developing Contexts.” Regulation & Governance, Vol 11 (3): 282-298. [pdf]
2016. “Co-optation & Clientelism: Nested Distributive Politics in China’s Single-Party Dictatorship,” Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol 51(3): 235-256.
2014. “Perverse Complementarity: Political Connections and the Use of Courts Among Private Firms in China” (with Nan Jia), The Journal of Politics, Vol 76 (2): 318-332
2014. “Authoritarian Restraints on Online Activism Revisited: Why ‘I-Paid-A-Bribe’ Worked in India but Failed in China,” Comparative Politics, Vol 47 (1): 21-40 [pdf]
2012. “Counting Cadres: A Comparative View of the Size of China’s Public Employment,” The China Quarterly, Volume 211: 676-696 [pdf] [Chinese translation]
2009. “Centralizing Treasury Management in China: The Rationale of the Central Reformers,” Public Administration & Development, Vol 29(4): 263-73
Book Chapters
Forthcoming. “Who is Blamed for the Pandemic? A 15-Country Survey & Implications for the China Model,” edited by Dan Lynch & Stanley Rosen (with Twila Tardif and Wenjia Song)
2022. “Has China’s Economic Success Proven that Autocracy is Superior to Democracy?” In China Questions II: Critical Insights into US-China Relationship. Harvard University Press. [pdf]
2021. “Beyond Elite Innovation.” Forum on “Making Prosperity Local” (led by Daniel Breznitz, with contributions by Ben Armstrong, Ro Khanna, and others). In Public Purpose: Government’s Role in Shared Prosperity. Published by Boston Review and distributed by MIT Press. [Open-access link]
2018. “Directed Improvisation in Administrative Financing.” In Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, edited by Jean Oi and Steve Goldstein. Stanford University Press. [pdf]
2017. “Do Weberian Bureaucracies Lead to Markets or Vice Versa? A Coevolutionary Approach to Development,” In States in the Developing World, edited by Atul Kohli, Deborah Yashar & Miguel Centeno, Cambridge University Press. [pdf]
Essays
2023. “Reinventing Multilateralism: What to Do, What to Study, and Why.” Special Issue on Reinventing Multilateralism (edited by Michael Woolcock and JP Singh). Global Perspectives. [open-access link]
2022. “The Problem with Zero: How Xi’s Pandemic Policy Created a Crisis for the Regime.” Foreign Affairs (online edition), 2 December 2022.
Translated into Arabic in Independent Arabia
Podcast interview on China in Context
2022. “The Clash of Two Gilded Ages,” Noema, 31 August 2022. [open-access link]
Noema’s Top 10 Articles Of 2022
Featured in The Wire China, BusinessLive (South Africa), Hindustan Times (India), USCPM (in Chinese); podcast interview on Counterpoint
Finalist (5 named), 65th SoCal Journalism Awards, magazine commentary category
2022. "How Resilient Is the CCP?" Journal of Democracy, vol. 33 no. 3, 2022, p. 77-91. [open-access link]
Selected by JOD among “7 Essential Essays on China under Xi Jinping’s rule”
Most read article across all journals published by Johns Hopkins University Press in July 2022
Spanish translation reprinted in Política Exterior
Mentioned in CNBC, El Pais (Spain), Indian Express (India), La Presse (Canada), RTP (Portugal), podcast interview on SupChina
2022. “Why the World Needs China to be Pragmatic Again.” Noema. 30 March 2022. [open-access link]
2021. “Decoding Xi Jinping: How Will China’s Bureaucrats Interpret His Call for Common Prosperity?” Foreign Affairs (web edition), 8 December 2021.
2021. “The Robber Barons of Beijing: Can China Survive Its Gilded Age?” Foreign Affairs, July/August Print Issue on Can China Keep Rising.
Selected by the Atlantic Council as “This Week’s Top Reads”
Translated into Italian in Aspenia Vol. 94 (2021)
2019. “Demystifying China’s Belt and Road: The Struggle to Define China’s Project of the Century,” Foreign Affairs, May 22, 2019.
2018. “The Real China Model: It’s Not What You Think It is,” Foreign Affairs, Web edition, June 29, 2018.
2018. “Autocracy with Chinese Characteristics: Beijing’s Behind-the-Scenes Reforms,” Foreign Affairs, May/June issue on “Is Democracy Dying?”, invited essay in print issue.
Selected by Foreign Affairs as “Best of Print 2018”
Included in Foreign Affairs’ reading list on “How to Understand the United States and China”
Notable mentions: The New York Times (Philip Pan), CNN and Washington Post (Fareed Zakaria), Democracy Works (former Nigerian President Obasanjo), PBS Frontline
2018. “Going Local 2.0: How to Reform Development Agencies to Make Localized Aid More than Talk.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, October 8, 2018. [open-access link]
Adapted from essay that won Gates Foundation-GDN global contest seeking “original and innovative thinking on development assistance”
Reports
2022. Testimony delivered to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on the topic of “CCP Decision-Making and the 20th Party Congress,” January 27, 2022.
2021. Testimony delivered to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on “U.S.-China Relations at the Chinese Communist Party’s Centennial,” January 28, 2021.
2019. “Integrating Big Data & Thick Data to Transform Public Services Delivery,” IBM Center for the Business of Government Research Report [open-access link]
Book reviews
2022. Review of Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise, by Susan Shirk, in Foreign Affairs.
2020. “Three Factors Confounding China’s Growth Trajectory,” Review of The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China, by Nicholas Lardy, in Asia Policy; book review roundtable with Kenneth Pomeranz and Loren Brandt
2017. Review of China’s Governance Puzzle: Transparency and Participation in a Single Party-State, by Edmund Malesky et al, in Foreign Affairs
2012. Review of China’s Local Public Finance in Transition, by Joyce Yanyun Man & Yu-Hung Hong, in The China Quarterly, 208: 1028-1030.
2006. Review of Corruption and Market in Contemporary China, by Sun Yan, in Review of Politics, 68(1): 152-155.