Kellee S Tsai
Biographic Data
| ID | 336343 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kellee S Tsai |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kellee S |
| FAMILY NAME | Tsai |
| SIGNATURE | TSAI K S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4185-1744 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 297 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Pathways to Authoritarian Capitalism
The global emergence of authoritarian capitalism warrants analysis of its features, economic pathways, and class basis. We argue that the timing of capitalism's establishment relative to authoritarianism affects the extent of state capture by business and the regime's stance towards labor. When capitalism preceded authoritarianism, autocracy arose from a “crisis of capitalism” in flawed democracies, either from fear of communist redistribution or…
Multi-scale policy diffusion of marine emissions governance
Maritime transport is a global industry governed by a multi-scale regulatory system. This paper employed an innovative iterative policy review methodology for examining policy diffusion in maritime governance systems across different jurisdictions including both the public and industrial sectors. We applied the framework to investigate cross-level policy diffusion in controlling marine emissions and policy dynamics in China’s Greater Bay Area (GB…
Securing Authoritarian Capitalism in the Digital Age: The Political Economy of Surveillance in China
To develop a robust surveillance apparatus in the digital age, autocracies are compelled to rely on foreign suppliers or to allow domestic private entrepreneurs to enter a strategic industrial sector. The process through which China developed a surveillance state led by globally competitive security companies exemplifies this authoritarian capitalist dynamic. Initial liberalization enabled domestic firms to adapt foreign technology and eventually…
China's Party-State Capitalism and International Backlash: From Interdependence to Insecurity
Contrary to expectations, economic interdependence has not tempered security conflict between China and the United States. In response to perceived domestic and external threats, the Chinese Communist Party's actions to ensure regime security have generated insecurity in other states, causing them to adopt measures to constrain Chinese firms. Security dilemma dynamics best explain the subsequent reactions from many advanced industrialized countri…
Evolutionary Governance in China: State-Society Relations under Authoritarianism
The People’s Republic of China has experienced numerous challenges and undergone tremendous structural changes over the past four decades. The party-state now faces a fundamental tension in its pursuit of social stability and regime durability. Repressive state strategies enable the Chinese Communist Party to maintain its monopoly on political power, yet the quality of governance and regime legitimacy are enhanced when the state adopts more inclu…
Party-State Capitalism in China
China’s economic model, commonly described as “state capitalist,” is now better characterized as party-state capitalism, in which the political survival of the Communist Party trumps developmental goals. Its tools for managing the economy include not only state ownership and market interventions, but increasing use of party-state power to discipline private capital. China’s entrepreneurs are now expected to adhere to the party line, as are foreig…
Upgrading Big Brother: Local Strategic Adaptation in China’s Security Industry
What are the circumstances under which latecomer firms can develop indigenous innovative capacity and compete globally? China’s construction of a vast domestic security apparatus has contributed to it becoming the world’s largest supplier and consumer of video surveillance products and services. It has also produced several globally competitive companies, including those engaged in digital surveillance. Although security equipment producers initi…
Structural Power, Hegemony, and State Capitalism: Limits to China's Global Economic Power
A comparative historical perspective shows how globalization and the specificities of China's rapid growth era limit its hegemonic potential in the twenty-first century global economy. Although state capitalism and openness to foreign capital facilitated China's economic transformation, interactions among three forms of capital-state, private, and foreign-have produced developmental dynamics that constrain China's capacity to assume the position …
Reverse entrepreneurial migration in China and India: The role of the state
China and India have significant overseas populations that constitute global talent, and both countries recognize that reverse migration of diasporic talent can contribute to domestic economic development. This study compares China and India’s capacity to encourage return migration with a focus on overseas entrepreneurs who return to start new firms in their homeland. In addition to reviewing state policies and prior related research, we analyze …
Inter-Governmental Vertical Competition in China’s Urbanization Process
Urbanization in China involves administrative conversion of rural counties into urban districts. During the 1990s, provincial governments enhanced the authority of county governments by building more direct linkages between the two levels. Yet prefecture-level cities retained direct administrative authority over counties on certain issues. Based on fieldwork and an original database of administrative reorganization cases from 2011 to 2016, the au…
When Shadow Banking Can Be Productive: Financing Small and Medium Enterprises in China
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) represent the backbone of China’s economy, yet they face challenges in accessing bank credit. SMEs thus rely on a wide range of alternative sources, including informal finance, online peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms, registered non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs), and underground financiers. This article distinguishes among different types of ‘shadow banking’ to clarify popular misconceptions about the natu…
Institutional Adaptability in China: Local Developmental Models Under Changing Economic Conditions
Distinct patterns of regional development have emerged in China’s political economy since the initiation of economic reforms in late 1970s. In particular, the localities of Suzhou, Wenzhou, and Dongguan each achieved dramatic economic growth during the first three decades of reform, earning them national reputations as developmental “models” for other cities in China to recognize and emulate. However, the local states of Suzhou, Wenzhou, and Dong…
Cosmopolitan Capitalism: Local State-Society Relations in China and India
This article examines different patterns of "cosmopolitan capitalism" in three paired localities in China and India: (1) Zhejiang/Gujarat, (2) Zhongguancun/Bangalore, and (3) Guangdong/Kerala. The paired cases illustrate the attentiveness of the local state to transnational society and present varied expressions of the local developmental impact of remittances and return migration. Analytically, this article departs from conventional usages of bo…
The State of China’s Economic Miracle
What are the sources of China’s breathtaking economic growth since the late 1970s? The answer is encapsulated in the title of Nicholas Lardy’s most recent book, Markets over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China. It’s the private sector. In 1978, state-owned enterprises generated three quarters of China’s industrial output. Today they account for only one quarter. Besides displacing state firms in terms of industrial output, private firms no…
State Capitalism, Institutional Adaptation, and the Chinese Miracle
The Evolution of Foreign Direct Investment in Asia
This chapter reviews the foreign direct investment (FDI) patterns of Japan, China, India, and South Korea, as well as smaller and emerging players stretching from Southeast Asia to Central Asia. By 2012 Asia accounted for 27% of FDI inflows and 17% of FDI outflows worldwide. Intraregional FDI accounts for about 40% of total FDI in Asia. Although there is a strong economic rationale for intraregional investment flows, Asia has a state-mediated inv…
China's Political Economy and Political Science
China's contemporary political economy is among the most exciting and demanding frontiers of research in comparative politics. The country's sheer size and internal diversity offer a natural laboratory for examining topics at multiple levels and units of analysis, and in varied regional environments. China's salience in the international media and business community also presents scholars with the added opportunity (and even responsibility) for c…
Capitalism without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China
Over the past three decades, China has undergone a historic transformation. Once illegal, its private business sector now comprises 30 million businesses employing more than 200 million people and accounting for half of China's Gross Domestic Product. Yet despite the optimistic predictions of political observers and global business leaders, the triumph of capitalism has not led to substantial democratic reforms. In Capitalism without Democracy , …
Friends, Family or Foreigners? The Political Economy of Diasporic FDI and Remittances in China and India
Focusing exclusively on foreign direct investment (FDI) as a comparative measure of capital inflows obscures another significant source of funds—that of monetary remittances. This article emphasizes the empirical and analytic value of disaggregating FDI data and analyzing remittance trends in the two most populous developing countries in the world, China and India. While identifying the determinants of FDI inflows dominates much of the literature…
Revisiting the Japanese Economic Model
Adaptive Informal Institutions and Endogenous Institutional Change in China
Under certain circumstances, the etiology of endogenous institutional change lies in the informal coping strategies devised by local actors to evade the restrictions of formal institutions. With repetition and diffusion, these informal coping strategies may take on an institutional reality of their own. The author calls the resulting norms and practicesadaptiveinformal institutions because they represent creative responses to formal institutional…
Capitalists without a Class: Political Diversity Among Private Entrepreneurs in China
This article questions predictions about China’s democratic potential based on rising incomes in the private sector. For private entrepreneurs to constitute a democratizing force, structural theories expect two causal links: first, class formation; and second, collective action. This article examines national surveys of business owners, proposes a typology of entrepreneurs’ political behavior, and concludes that class formation has not occurred a…
Imperfect Substitutes: The Local Political Economy of Informal Finance and Microfinance in Rural China and India
Off balance: The unintended consequences of fiscal federalism in China
Segmented Markets: Grassroots Finance in Rural China and India
The first section reviews the key expressions of formal and semi-formal finance in China and India, and shows how the countries' strategies in rural financial intermediation compare with one another. Both have relied on directed credit and encouraged the growth of microfinance programmes, albeit to differing degrees. The second section outlines the main expressions of informal finance in China and India and discusses the extent to which they have…
Adaptive Informal Institutions and Endogenous Institutional Change in China
Under certain circumstances, the etiology of endogenous institutional change lies in the informal coping strategies devised by local actors to evade the restrictions of formal institutions. With repetition and diffusion, these informal coping strategies may take on an institutional reality of their own. The author calls the resulting norms and practicesadaptiveinformal institutions because they represent creative responses to formal institutional…
Imperfect Substitutes: The Local Political Economy of Informal Finance and Microfinance in Rural China and India
Capitalists without a Class: Political Diversity Among Private Entrepreneurs in China
This article questions predictions about China’s democratic potential based on rising incomes in the private sector. For private entrepreneurs to constitute a democratizing force, structural theories expect two causal links: first, class formation; and second, collective action. This article examines national surveys of business owners, proposes a typology of entrepreneurs’ political behavior, and concludes that class formation has not occurred a…
Factionalism: A New Institutionalist Restatement
Structural Power, Hegemony, and State Capitalism: Limits to China's Global Economic Power
A comparative historical perspective shows how globalization and the specificities of China's rapid growth era limit its hegemonic potential in the twenty-first century global economy. Although state capitalism and openness to foreign capital facilitated China's economic transformation, interactions among three forms of capital-state, private, and foreign-have produced developmental dynamics that constrain China's capacity to assume the position …
China's Party-State Capitalism and International Backlash: From Interdependence to Insecurity
Contrary to expectations, economic interdependence has not tempered security conflict between China and the United States. In response to perceived domestic and external threats, the Chinese Communist Party's actions to ensure regime security have generated insecurity in other states, causing them to adopt measures to constrain Chinese firms. Security dilemma dynamics best explain the subsequent reactions from many advanced industrialized countri…
Securing Authoritarian Capitalism in the Digital Age: The Political Economy of Surveillance in China
To develop a robust surveillance apparatus in the digital age, autocracies are compelled to rely on foreign suppliers or to allow domestic private entrepreneurs to enter a strategic industrial sector. The process through which China developed a surveillance state led by globally competitive security companies exemplifies this authoritarian capitalist dynamic. Initial liberalization enabled domestic firms to adapt foreign technology and eventually…
Institutional Adaptability in China: Local Developmental Models Under Changing Economic Conditions
Distinct patterns of regional development have emerged in China’s political economy since the initiation of economic reforms in late 1970s. In particular, the localities of Suzhou, Wenzhou, and Dongguan each achieved dramatic economic growth during the first three decades of reform, earning them national reputations as developmental “models” for other cities in China to recognize and emulate. However, the local states of Suzhou, Wenzhou, and Dong…
Inter-Governmental Vertical Competition in China’s Urbanization Process
Urbanization in China involves administrative conversion of rural counties into urban districts. During the 1990s, provincial governments enhanced the authority of county governments by building more direct linkages between the two levels. Yet prefecture-level cities retained direct administrative authority over counties on certain issues. Based on fieldwork and an original database of administrative reorganization cases from 2011 to 2016, the au…
China's Political Economy and Political Science
China's contemporary political economy is among the most exciting and demanding frontiers of research in comparative politics. The country's sheer size and internal diversity offer a natural laboratory for examining topics at multiple levels and units of analysis, and in varied regional environments. China's salience in the international media and business community also presents scholars with the added opportunity (and even responsibility) for c…
Off balance: The unintended consequences of fiscal federalism in China
Reverse entrepreneurial migration in China and India: The role of the state
China and India have significant overseas populations that constitute global talent, and both countries recognize that reverse migration of diasporic talent can contribute to domestic economic development. This study compares China and India’s capacity to encourage return migration with a focus on overseas entrepreneurs who return to start new firms in their homeland. In addition to reviewing state policies and prior related research, we analyze …
Upgrading Big Brother: Local Strategic Adaptation in China’s Security Industry
What are the circumstances under which latecomer firms can develop indigenous innovative capacity and compete globally? China’s construction of a vast domestic security apparatus has contributed to it becoming the world’s largest supplier and consumer of video surveillance products and services. It has also produced several globally competitive companies, including those engaged in digital surveillance. Although security equipment producers initi…
Friends, Family or Foreigners? The Political Economy of Diasporic FDI and Remittances in China and India
Focusing exclusively on foreign direct investment (FDI) as a comparative measure of capital inflows obscures another significant source of funds—that of monetary remittances. This article emphasizes the empirical and analytic value of disaggregating FDI data and analyzing remittance trends in the two most populous developing countries in the world, China and India. While identifying the determinants of FDI inflows dominates much of the literature…
Cosmopolitan Capitalism: Local State-Society Relations in China and India
This article examines different patterns of "cosmopolitan capitalism" in three paired localities in China and India: (1) Zhejiang/Gujarat, (2) Zhongguancun/Bangalore, and (3) Guangdong/Kerala. The paired cases illustrate the attentiveness of the local state to transnational society and present varied expressions of the local developmental impact of remittances and return migration. Analytically, this article departs from conventional usages of bo…
Segmented Markets: Grassroots Finance in Rural China and India
The first section reviews the key expressions of formal and semi-formal finance in China and India, and shows how the countries' strategies in rural financial intermediation compare with one another. Both have relied on directed credit and encouraged the growth of microfinance programmes, albeit to differing degrees. The second section outlines the main expressions of informal finance in China and India and discusses the extent to which they have…
Factionalism: A New Institutionalist Restatement
Banquet Banking: Gender and Rotating Savings and Credit Associations in South China
The thirty members of Mr. Chang's society were asked to meet at his house on the 18th of the seventh month. As they were coming at his request and were going to help him with his need for funds. Mr. Chang provided a feast for his friends. A feast was served at all subsequent meetings of the [credit] society, but after the first meeting each member paid his share of the expense. (Sidney D. Gamble, “A Chinese mutual savings society,” Far Eastern Qu…
Internationalizing China: Domestic Interests and Global Linkages
Segmented Markets: Grassroots Finance in Rural China and India
The first section reviews the key expressions of formal and semi-formal finance in China and India, and shows how the countries' strategies in rural financial intermediation compare with one another. Both have relied on directed credit and encouraged the growth of microfinance programmes, albeit to differing degrees. The second section outlines the main expressions of informal finance in China and India and discusses the extent to which they have…
Imperfect Substitutes: The Local Political Economy of Informal Finance and Microfinance in Rural China and India
Off balance: The unintended consequences of fiscal federalism in China
Capitalists without a Class: Political Diversity Among Private Entrepreneurs in China
This article questions predictions about China’s democratic potential based on rising incomes in the private sector. For private entrepreneurs to constitute a democratizing force, structural theories expect two causal links: first, class formation; and second, collective action. This article examines national surveys of business owners, proposes a typology of entrepreneurs’ political behavior, and concludes that class formation has not occurred a…
Revisiting the Japanese Economic Model
Adaptive Informal Institutions and Endogenous Institutional Change in China
Under certain circumstances, the etiology of endogenous institutional change lies in the informal coping strategies devised by local actors to evade the restrictions of formal institutions. With repetition and diffusion, these informal coping strategies may take on an institutional reality of their own. The author calls the resulting norms and practicesadaptiveinformal institutions because they represent creative responses to formal institutional…
Friends, Family or Foreigners? The Political Economy of Diasporic FDI and Remittances in China and India
Focusing exclusively on foreign direct investment (FDI) as a comparative measure of capital inflows obscures another significant source of funds—that of monetary remittances. This article emphasizes the empirical and analytic value of disaggregating FDI data and analyzing remittance trends in the two most populous developing countries in the world, China and India. While identifying the determinants of FDI inflows dominates much of the literature…
Capitalism without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China
Over the past three decades, China has undergone a historic transformation. Once illegal, its private business sector now comprises 30 million businesses employing more than 200 million people and accounting for half of China's Gross Domestic Product. Yet despite the optimistic predictions of political observers and global business leaders, the triumph of capitalism has not led to substantial democratic reforms. In Capitalism without Democracy , …
China's Political Economy and Political Science
China's contemporary political economy is among the most exciting and demanding frontiers of research in comparative politics. The country's sheer size and internal diversity offer a natural laboratory for examining topics at multiple levels and units of analysis, and in varied regional environments. China's salience in the international media and business community also presents scholars with the added opportunity (and even responsibility) for c…
The Evolution of Foreign Direct Investment in Asia
This chapter reviews the foreign direct investment (FDI) patterns of Japan, China, India, and South Korea, as well as smaller and emerging players stretching from Southeast Asia to Central Asia. By 2012 Asia accounted for 27% of FDI inflows and 17% of FDI outflows worldwide. Intraregional FDI accounts for about 40% of total FDI in Asia. Although there is a strong economic rationale for intraregional investment flows, Asia has a state-mediated inv…
The State of China’s Economic Miracle
What are the sources of China’s breathtaking economic growth since the late 1970s? The answer is encapsulated in the title of Nicholas Lardy’s most recent book, Markets over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China. It’s the private sector. In 1978, state-owned enterprises generated three quarters of China’s industrial output. Today they account for only one quarter. Besides displacing state firms in terms of industrial output, private firms no…
State Capitalism, Institutional Adaptation, and the Chinese Miracle
Institutional Adaptability in China: Local Developmental Models Under Changing Economic Conditions
Distinct patterns of regional development have emerged in China’s political economy since the initiation of economic reforms in late 1970s. In particular, the localities of Suzhou, Wenzhou, and Dongguan each achieved dramatic economic growth during the first three decades of reform, earning them national reputations as developmental “models” for other cities in China to recognize and emulate. However, the local states of Suzhou, Wenzhou, and Dong…
Cosmopolitan Capitalism: Local State-Society Relations in China and India
This article examines different patterns of "cosmopolitan capitalism" in three paired localities in China and India: (1) Zhejiang/Gujarat, (2) Zhongguancun/Bangalore, and (3) Guangdong/Kerala. The paired cases illustrate the attentiveness of the local state to transnational society and present varied expressions of the local developmental impact of remittances and return migration. Analytically, this article departs from conventional usages of bo…
When Shadow Banking Can Be Productive: Financing Small and Medium Enterprises in China
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) represent the backbone of China’s economy, yet they face challenges in accessing bank credit. SMEs thus rely on a wide range of alternative sources, including informal finance, online peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms, registered non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs), and underground financiers. This article distinguishes among different types of ‘shadow banking’ to clarify popular misconceptions about the natu…
Inter-Governmental Vertical Competition in China’s Urbanization Process
Urbanization in China involves administrative conversion of rural counties into urban districts. During the 1990s, provincial governments enhanced the authority of county governments by building more direct linkages between the two levels. Yet prefecture-level cities retained direct administrative authority over counties on certain issues. Based on fieldwork and an original database of administrative reorganization cases from 2011 to 2016, the au…
Reverse entrepreneurial migration in China and India: The role of the state
China and India have significant overseas populations that constitute global talent, and both countries recognize that reverse migration of diasporic talent can contribute to domestic economic development. This study compares China and India’s capacity to encourage return migration with a focus on overseas entrepreneurs who return to start new firms in their homeland. In addition to reviewing state policies and prior related research, we analyze …
Evolutionary Governance in China: State-Society Relations under Authoritarianism
The People’s Republic of China has experienced numerous challenges and undergone tremendous structural changes over the past four decades. The party-state now faces a fundamental tension in its pursuit of social stability and regime durability. Repressive state strategies enable the Chinese Communist Party to maintain its monopoly on political power, yet the quality of governance and regime legitimacy are enhanced when the state adopts more inclu…
Party-State Capitalism in China
China’s economic model, commonly described as “state capitalist,” is now better characterized as party-state capitalism, in which the political survival of the Communist Party trumps developmental goals. Its tools for managing the economy include not only state ownership and market interventions, but increasing use of party-state power to discipline private capital. China’s entrepreneurs are now expected to adhere to the party line, as are foreig…
Upgrading Big Brother: Local Strategic Adaptation in China’s Security Industry
What are the circumstances under which latecomer firms can develop indigenous innovative capacity and compete globally? China’s construction of a vast domestic security apparatus has contributed to it becoming the world’s largest supplier and consumer of video surveillance products and services. It has also produced several globally competitive companies, including those engaged in digital surveillance. Although security equipment producers initi…
Structural Power, Hegemony, and State Capitalism: Limits to China's Global Economic Power
A comparative historical perspective shows how globalization and the specificities of China's rapid growth era limit its hegemonic potential in the twenty-first century global economy. Although state capitalism and openness to foreign capital facilitated China's economic transformation, interactions among three forms of capital-state, private, and foreign-have produced developmental dynamics that constrain China's capacity to assume the position …
Securing Authoritarian Capitalism in the Digital Age: The Political Economy of Surveillance in China
To develop a robust surveillance apparatus in the digital age, autocracies are compelled to rely on foreign suppliers or to allow domestic private entrepreneurs to enter a strategic industrial sector. The process through which China developed a surveillance state led by globally competitive security companies exemplifies this authoritarian capitalist dynamic. Initial liberalization enabled domestic firms to adapt foreign technology and eventually…
China (23 works) · Political science (23 works) · Economics (22 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (15 works) · Business (14 works) · Politics (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Economic system (9 works) · Market economy (9 works)