Beyond the two book projects, my research explores the politics of subnational development, central-local relations, urban governance, and subnational foreign relations in contemporary China. Selected research articles and policy research reports appears below.
Bridges or Battlegrounds? American Cities in the US-China Relationship (with Sara A. Newland, 2025, Truman Center for National Policy )
Paradiplomacy in Hard Times: Cooperation and Confrontation in Subnational US-China Relations (with Sara A. Newland, 2024, Publius: Journal of Federalism)
State-level US-China Relations at the Crossroads: Predicaments and Prospects for Subnational Engagement (2023, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
The Multilevel Politics of County-to-District Mergers in China (with Jianze He, 2023, Journal of Contemporary China)
China’s Urban Fault Lines: The Politics of Territorial Restructuring in Nanjing and Ningbo.” (2022, Urban Affairs Review)
Localism in Retreat? China’s Central-Provincial Relations in the Xi Jinping Era (with David J. Bulman, 2021, Journal of Contemporary China)
Loyalists, Localists, and Legibility: The Calibrated Control of Provincial Leadership Teams in China” (with David J. Bulman, 2020, Politics & Society)
Provincial Power in a Centralizing China: The Politics of Domestic and International “Development Space” (with Yeling Tan, 2020, The China Journal)
Leninism and Local Interests: How Concurrent Leadership Appointments Benefit Cities in China” (with David J. Bulman, 2019, Studies in Comparative International Development)
China’s Newsmakers: Official Media Coverage and Political Shifts in the Xi Jinping Era (with Jennifer Pan, 2017, China Quarterly)
Rethinking Subnational Government Capacity in China (2016, Journal of Chinese Governance)
Forging Greater Xi’an: The Political Logic of Metropolitanization (2015, Modern China)