I study how states govern through law, information, and markets, with a regional focus on China and East Asia. My research centers on authoritarian institutions, legal politics, and political economy, asking how regimes use legal professionals, administrative enforcement, and information control to manage compliance, legitimacy, and contestation.

One research agenda examines authoritarian legality in China, including legal aid, administrative penalties, rural legal mobilization, and the political role of lawyers. A second agenda studies the domestic and global consequences of U.S.-China rivalry, including trade shocks, public procurement, and mass attitudes toward economic and technological competition. Across projects, I combine field and survey experiments, causal inference, and computational text and audio analysis.

My work has appeared in Political Analysis (Editors’ Choice 2024), with ongoing projects under revision at Comparative Political Studies and the American Journal of Political Science. My research has been supported by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Institute for Humane Studies, Columbia University’s Comparative Political Economy grant, UC San Diego research awards, and Duke University fellowships and research grants.

I teach quantitative and comparative politics through hands-on, evidence-driven learning. My courses emphasize causal reasoning, transparent assessment, and reproducible research design. Selected teaching experience is summarized below, and my full teaching statement and evaluations are available in PDF form.