I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science (Computational Social Science) at the University of California, San Diego, and an affiliate of the 21st Century China Center. My research examines how states manage law, information, and markets under authoritarian rule. Using field and survey experiments, administrative data, and computational text and audio analysis, I study how autocrats—especially in China—use legal institutions and professionals to sustain legitimacy while constraining democratization.

My book project, Professional Origins of Authoritarian Rule of Law, explains how legal mobilization emerges under autocracy and how rulers govern through expertise rather than coercion alone. The chapters examine: (1) How governments use lawyers to selectively deliver justice and maintain control; (2) How lawyers consolidate civil society to resist authoritarian constraints; and (3) The effectiveness of citizen and government appeals to lawyers in competing for legal mobilization. Together, the book explores how pro-liberal professional elites function as intermediaries between state and society in authoritarian contexts.

A second line of work investigates: (1) The social and environmental consequences of the U.S.–China trade war; (2) The political influence of legal professionals across countries; and (3) Public opinion, ideology, propaganda, and censorship in China, Japan, and beyond. Across projects, I primarily use field and survey experiments, causal inference, text and audio analysis, and large administrative or historical archives to study political behavior and institutional adaptation under authoritarianism.

My research has been published in Political Analysis (Editors’ Choice 2024) and is under review at Comparative Political Studies and the American Journal of Political Science.