Ziwen (Gary) Zu

I’m a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science (Computational Social Science) at UC San Diego and an affiliate of the 21st Century China Center. I study authoritarian and judicial politics. Using field and survey experiments, administrative data, and computational text/audio analysis, I examine how autocrats—especially in China—use legal professionals and institutions to build an authoritarian rule of law that sustains legitimacy while constraining democratization. A second agenda analyzes how U.S.–China rivalry and nationalist heuristics shape public opinion and policy in trade, technology, and public procurement.

My book project, Mobilizing Law: Professionalism and Control in Authoritarian China, explains the sources of legal mobilization under autocracy and its implications for civic engagement. Departing from accounts centered on repression or formal constraints, I theorize law as a professionalized arena where rulers govern through expertise and citizens engage through trust and ethical identity. I develop the concept of selective responsiveness—the calibrated provision of justice to contain dissent, co-opt legal professionals, and simulate rule-of-law governance—and test it with original data.

My work appears in Political Analysis (Editors’ Choice 2024). Current projects include R&Rs at Comparative Political Studies and the American Journal of Political Science. I also build public goods, including the first systematic biographies of Chinese legal professionals and a global dataset of election candidates’ occupational backgrounds. My research has been supported by the 21st Century China Center, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy.