Ziwen (Gary) Zu

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science (Computational Social Science major) at the University of California, San Diego and an affiliated researcher with UCSD’s 21st Century China Center.

My work explores how authoritarian regimes—especially China—use courts, lawyers, and public legal programs to exercise control and project legitimacy. I integrate administrative data, field & survey experiments, and computational text/audio analysis with extensive field work. A second line of research traces the political‑economic fallout of the U.S.–China trade war, showing how nationalist threat perceptions shape public opinion and government procurement. My dissertation explains how the Chinese state deploys legal aid, legal professionals, and civic legal education to co‑opt citizens while signalling justice.

My work appears in Political Analysis and is supported by the 21st Century China Center, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Chiang Ching‑kuo Foundation, and UCSD’s School of Global Policy  and  Strategy. Download my CV.