PhD Candidate
East Asia — China
My disseration is a comparative study of the "information orders" of the developmental states of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China from the early 1950s through the 1970s. Using the production of agricultural knowledge as a case study, I look at the ways that both states sought to create accurate sources of information to guide their state-led economic planning. Though both states were led by one-party governments (led by the Chinese Communist Party and Nationalist Party, respectively) and carried out land to the tiller movements, as well as subsequent agricultural cooperatization, they developed fundamentally different approaches to gathering crucial information on rural economic life. I look at how their different understandings of the role of expertise, the optimal relationship of grassroots agricultural units to the state, and the importance of politics to information gathering created diverging sets of information problems that both states had to overcome in their striving for rapid economic development.
Publications
Review: The Chinese Communist Party: A Century in Ten Lives, PRC History Review
Research Interests
- Comparative Histories of Socialism
- The Developmental State in East Asia
- Legacies of Confucian Governance
- Bureaucratic Cultures
- Nationalism and Colonialism
- Political Economies of Information
Awards and Fellowships
2021 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellow
Long-Ling Hsiao Chu and Chao Chi Chu Fellowship in Chinese Studies
Kask Fellowship
2020 Joseph R. Levenson Chinese Studies Award
UC Berkeley Outstanding GSI Award
2019 Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies Language Study Grant; Funded by Republic of China East Asian Fund
Summer Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship: Chinese
2018 Summer Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship: Japanese
