Community

Getting China Right Conference Series

On December 15, 2017, Liz Perry, Lily Tsai, and I organized a Chinese politics workshop at Harvard University that launched the Getting China Right conference series. The workshop convened more than 50 scholars to assess the state of the field. Participants were invited to submit short memos of their choosing, reflecting on the past, present, and future of research on Chinese politics. Following the workshop, many contributors generously agreed to make their memos publicly available. The zip file below contains these memos. [DOWNLOAD]

 

Chinese Politics Research in Progress Online Workshop

Xiaobo Lü (UC Berkeley) and I launched Chinese Politics Research in Progress (CPRP) — a new virtual workshop series focused on political science research on China. We welcome presentations by scholars at all career stages (e.g., graduate students, post-docs, junior and senior faculty) in comparative politics and international relations and with different methodological approaches (e.g., qualitative, quantitative, formal modeling etc.). The CPRP virtual workshop will be held between *12:00-1:00PM* (Central Standard Time) on Fridays every two or three weeks during the regular academic year. The workshop typically lasts about 1 hour.

 

New Faces in Chinese Politics

Iza Ding, Fiona Cunningham, Taylor Fravel, Melanie Manion, Dan Mattingly, and I formed a Consortium on New Faces in Chinese Politics (past co-organizers also include Yue Hou and Reed (Zhenhuan) Lei). The consortium organizes events to support early-career scholars working on China, with a particular focus on field research and the academic job market. In August 2021, we hosted the inaugural New Faces in Chinese Politics Conference at Duke University. Since then, the conference has rotated across our home institutions: the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2022, the University of Pennsylvania in 2023, Harvard University in 2024, and Yale University in 2025.

On October 20, 2020, we organized a special Zoom Webinar: THE JOB MARKET FOR PHD STUDENTS IN CHINESE POLITICS: 2020 AND AFTER . We invited 12 scholars and practioners to discuss China-related jobs in academia, think tanks, government, and the private sector. Here is the video of the webinar: [WATCH]

On March 23, 2021, we organized a Webinar on DOING FIELDWORK IN CHINA: CONVERSATIONS WITH PRACTITIONERS. We invited 12 Chinese politics scholars to discuss why we need to do fieldwork and how to do fieldwork. Here is the recording of the webinar:[WATCH]

 

How to Write Statement of Purpose

Here is a short essay I wrote (updated for 2021) about how to write SOP for graduate school application (including 5 examples from successful applicants): [DOWNLOAD]

 

Group of Asian Political History

Jean Hong, Xiaobo Lü, Dan Slater, and I formed the Group of Asian Political History (GRAPH). We organized the inaugural Mini-Conference on Asian Political History at APSA in 2023 and 2024. We will organize the first GRAPH conference at the University of Michigan in May, 2026. 

 

Broadstreet

I am one of the editors at Broadstreet, which is a blog dedicated to the study of historical political economy (HPE). Its goal is to foster conversations across disciplines in the social sciences, namely economics and political science, but also history, sociology, quantitative methods, and public policy. You can visit Broadstreet here: [VISIT]