Liang Cai
Biographic Data
| ID | 3844782 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Liang Cai |
| GIVEN NAMES | Liang |
| FAMILY NAME | Cai |
| SIGNATURE | CAI L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Notre Dame |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5131-3048 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 75 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Convict Politics
In this innovative history, Liang Cai examines newly excavated manuscripts alongside traditional sources to explore convict politics in the early Chinese empires, proposing a new framework for understanding Confucian discussions of law and legal practice. While a substantial number of convict laborers helped operate the local bureaucratic apparatus in early China, the central court re-employed numerous previously convicted men as high officials. …
The built environment and momentary loneliness among older adults
The Long-Term Theft Prediction in Beijing Using Machine Learning Algorithms
To advance the interpretability of machine learning for long-term crime prediction in China, we compared the performance of multiple machine learning algorithms in predicting the spatial pattern of theft in Beijing. Gradient boosting decision tree emerged as the algorithm with best predictive accuracy. After identifying the importance of criminogenic features, we extended the interpreter SHAP to reveal nonlinear and spatially heterogeneous associ…
Criminalizing Job Performance
Shang Yang and Han Feizi advocated performance-based law and excessive punishments, which they believed would prevent people from deceiving the lord and violating the law, thereby creating a crime-free utopia. However, by examining the archaeologically excavated materials and the transmitted sources, the author demonstrates that this brutal instrumentalism and idealism generated a monstrous legal system in real politics that distorted justice. Th…
ChatGPT and the digitisation of writing
The aim of this study is to uncover how students’ practices of writing in higher education are being impacted by ChatGPT. The use of ChatGPT and other generative AI needs to be set in the context of a longer-term process of the digitisation of writing, where many tools are being employed by students to support writing because it is a complex iterative process. Generative AI appears to have had a large impact on how students write, and we propose …
No Place Like Home? Local Crime and Older Adults' Time at Home
Home is a locus of everyday activity among a growing population of Americans who are 'aging in place,' and for whom leaving the home is generally thought to benefit quality of life and well-being. Sociological and criminological theory has often assumed that higher levels of local crime constrain individuals' activities to the residential environment, although few studies have empirically tested this assumption. We use longitudinal smartphone-bas…
Residents, Employees and Visitors
Objectives: The residential population of an area is an incomplete measure of the number of people that are momentarily present in the area, and of limited value as an indicator of exposure to the risk of crime. By accounting for the mobility of the population, measures of ambient population better reflect the momentary presence of people. They have therefore become an alternative indicator of exposure to the risk of crime. This study considers t…
Effects of ambient population with different income levels on the spatio-temporal pattern of theft
Safety perceptions among African migrants in Guangzhou and Foshan, China
Urban Mobility and Activity Space
Recent theoretical and methodological advances in urban sociology, including spatially located data, provide new opportunities to consider the joint influence of mobility and place in urban social life. This review defines the concept of activity space, describes its origins in urban sociology, and examines the extent to which activity space approaches advance sociological research in four substantive domains-spatial inequality and segregation, s…
Ru Scholars, Social Networks, and Bureaucracy
In this study I take men from Donghai, a region of northeast China, as a case study for examining models of success in the Western Han (206 b.c.e. –9 c.e. ). Employing digital tools to mine data from The Grand Scribe's Records ( Shi ji ) and The History of the Western Han ( Han shu ), I explore the social networks and career patterns of men from a region that enjoyed a reputation for producing a remarkable number of high officials and celebrated …
The Hermeneutics of Omens
Students of Chinese intellectual history are familiar with moral cosmology developed in the Han era, a theory that alleges that ru use omens to admonish the emperor, and thereby to constrain and compete with his absolute political power. This thesis, in theory, is convincing; in actuality it is not. This article questions the autonomous power of omen discourse. Focusing on the socio-political conditions in which this discourse functioned, it demo…
Witchcraft and the Rise of the First Confucian Empire
Estimation and spatial analysis of water pollution loads from towns in China
More than 95% of towns in China have no sewage treatment facilities at present. Increasing domestic sewage discharge from towns has greatly threatened not only the local environment and drinking water safety, but also the national water environment and sustainable development. However, there is no systemic investigation and data on sewage discharge and pollution loads from towns, which is necessary in order to plan and arrange sewage treatment in…
Urban Mobility and Activity Space
Recent theoretical and methodological advances in urban sociology, including spatially located data, provide new opportunities to consider the joint influence of mobility and place in urban social life. This review defines the concept of activity space, describes its origins in urban sociology, and examines the extent to which activity space approaches advance sociological research in four substantive domains-spatial inequality and segregation, s…
Safety perceptions among African migrants in Guangzhou and Foshan, China
No Place Like Home? Local Crime and Older Adults' Time at Home
Home is a locus of everyday activity among a growing population of Americans who are 'aging in place,' and for whom leaving the home is generally thought to benefit quality of life and well-being. Sociological and criminological theory has often assumed that higher levels of local crime constrain individuals' activities to the residential environment, although few studies have empirically tested this assumption. We use longitudinal smartphone-bas…
Effects of ambient population with different income levels on the spatio-temporal pattern of theft
Estimation and spatial analysis of water pollution loads from towns in China
More than 95% of towns in China have no sewage treatment facilities at present. Increasing domestic sewage discharge from towns has greatly threatened not only the local environment and drinking water safety, but also the national water environment and sustainable development. However, there is no systemic investigation and data on sewage discharge and pollution loads from towns, which is necessary in order to plan and arrange sewage treatment in…
Witchcraft and the Rise of the First Confucian Empire
The Hermeneutics of Omens
Students of Chinese intellectual history are familiar with moral cosmology developed in the Han era, a theory that alleges that ru use omens to admonish the emperor, and thereby to constrain and compete with his absolute political power. This thesis, in theory, is convincing; in actuality it is not. This article questions the autonomous power of omen discourse. Focusing on the socio-political conditions in which this discourse functioned, it demo…
Ru Scholars, Social Networks, and Bureaucracy
In this study I take men from Donghai, a region of northeast China, as a case study for examining models of success in the Western Han (206 b.c.e. –9 c.e. ). Employing digital tools to mine data from The Grand Scribe's Records ( Shi ji ) and The History of the Western Han ( Han shu ), I explore the social networks and career patterns of men from a region that enjoyed a reputation for producing a remarkable number of high officials and celebrated …
Safety perceptions among African migrants in Guangzhou and Foshan, China
Urban Mobility and Activity Space
Recent theoretical and methodological advances in urban sociology, including spatially located data, provide new opportunities to consider the joint influence of mobility and place in urban social life. This review defines the concept of activity space, describes its origins in urban sociology, and examines the extent to which activity space approaches advance sociological research in four substantive domains-spatial inequality and segregation, s…
Residents, Employees and Visitors
Objectives: The residential population of an area is an incomplete measure of the number of people that are momentarily present in the area, and of limited value as an indicator of exposure to the risk of crime. By accounting for the mobility of the population, measures of ambient population better reflect the momentary presence of people. They have therefore become an alternative indicator of exposure to the risk of crime. This study considers t…
Effects of ambient population with different income levels on the spatio-temporal pattern of theft
ChatGPT and the digitisation of writing
The aim of this study is to uncover how students’ practices of writing in higher education are being impacted by ChatGPT. The use of ChatGPT and other generative AI needs to be set in the context of a longer-term process of the digitisation of writing, where many tools are being employed by students to support writing because it is a complex iterative process. Generative AI appears to have had a large impact on how students write, and we propose …
No Place Like Home? Local Crime and Older Adults' Time at Home
Home is a locus of everyday activity among a growing population of Americans who are 'aging in place,' and for whom leaving the home is generally thought to benefit quality of life and well-being. Sociological and criminological theory has often assumed that higher levels of local crime constrain individuals' activities to the residential environment, although few studies have empirically tested this assumption. We use longitudinal smartphone-bas…
The Long-Term Theft Prediction in Beijing Using Machine Learning Algorithms
To advance the interpretability of machine learning for long-term crime prediction in China, we compared the performance of multiple machine learning algorithms in predicting the spatial pattern of theft in Beijing. Gradient boosting decision tree emerged as the algorithm with best predictive accuracy. After identifying the importance of criminogenic features, we extended the interpreter SHAP to reveal nonlinear and spatially heterogeneous associ…
Criminalizing Job Performance
Shang Yang and Han Feizi advocated performance-based law and excessive punishments, which they believed would prevent people from deceiving the lord and violating the law, thereby creating a crime-free utopia. However, by examining the archaeologically excavated materials and the transmitted sources, the author demonstrates that this brutal instrumentalism and idealism generated a monstrous legal system in real politics that distorted justice. Th…
Convict Politics
In this innovative history, Liang Cai examines newly excavated manuscripts alongside traditional sources to explore convict politics in the early Chinese empires, proposing a new framework for understanding Confucian discussions of law and legal practice. While a substantial number of convict laborers helped operate the local bureaucratic apparatus in early China, the central court re-employed numerous previously convicted men as high officials. …
The built environment and momentary loneliness among older adults
China (6 works) · Geography (6 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (3 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (3 works) · Demographic economics (3 works)