Ziwen (Gary) Zu

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science with a specialization certificate in Computational Social Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. I am also an affiliated researcher at the 21st Century China Center at UCSD. My research centers on authoritarian politics, specifically judicial politics and government-business relations, with a focus on China. Methodologically, I am dedicated to enhancing the credibility of instrumental variable estimation and survey experimental designs.

My dissertation examines how the Chinese government strategically employs legal professionals to carry out repression while projecting legitimacy. I address this question by analyzing China’s state-sponsored legal aid programs using both field and survey experiments, quasi-experimental designs, computational methods, and extensive fieldwork.

My work has been published in Political Analysis and supported by the 21st Century China Center, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UCSD.