Ziwen Zu is a PhD student in Political Science at University of California, San Diego. He received a Bachelor of Management in pubic administration from Sun Yat-Sen University in 2018. During 2018-2020, He conducted research and completed graduate coursework at Duke University, where he obtained a Master of Arts in political science. He is currently a research associate at 21 Century China Center at UCSD.

Ziwen Zu’s research tries to understand the formal and informal political institutions in nondemocracies, with a particular focus on China. He is interested in how do political institutions (e.g., judicial system, bureaucracy, political cycles) affect political elites and the general social welfare. During his spare time, He enjoy movies, literature, sci-fiction novels and learning history from archeology.