Xiaojun Yan
Biographic Data
| ID | 4070716 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Xiaojun Yan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Xiaojun |
| FAMILY NAME | Yan |
| SIGNATURE | YAN X |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9783-6522 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 88 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The Many Whispers From Yesteryear: How Has China’s History of Centrally Planned Socialism Shaped People’s Divergent Views of Justice Today
In this article, we investigate what factors contribute to the divergence of people’s ideological inclinations in a post-socialist society. To this end, we analyze large-scale survey data from China to examine the relationship between the socialist past and individual ideological inclinations. The findings reveal a strong and direct association between people’s current political orientation and their formative-age lifeworld. Specifically, individ…
Do Culturally Embedded Political Leaders Help or Hinder Economic Development
Previous research presents conflicting views on whether cultural similarities between state officials and the societies they govern promote or hinder economic growth. We posit that cultural embeddedness can facilitate local growth by reducing the transaction costs for alleviating the credible commitment problem, thereby efficiently diminishing the uncertainty for production and investment. Using linguistic similarity as a proxy for cultural embed…
Politicization as a Policy Instrument: China’s Politicized Policy Narrative of Environmental Protection and Control of Its Social Resonance
Policy politicization is an instrument used by modern states to achieve policy goals. Although politicization can facilitate a policy’s implementation by elevating its priority in the bureaucratic system, it may also create opportunities for the public to question the regime’s legitimacy and to call for broader political reforms. Using empirical evidence from 20 years of official narratives and public intellectual writings on environmental protec…
Censoring the Intellectual Public Space in China: What Topics Are Not Allowed and Who Gets Blacklisted
Censorship is one of the main forms of political coercion deployed by modern states to control and regulate public expression. In this article, we examine the political censorship of China’s intellectual public space, which has long been underexplored. We apply unsupervised machine learning to examine the database of a leading intellectual portal website, which serves as an archive of both published and censored intellectual writings between 2000…
Greasing the wheels of policy reversal: Discursive engineering and public opinion management during the relaxation of China's family planning policy
How do autocratic regimes use political propaganda to facilitate policy reversals of major significance? In this article, we demonstrate how the authoritarian regime in China dynamically uses propaganda to accomplish rapid discursive shifts in the context of major policy changes. Using a structural topic model for unsupervised machine learning to analyze extensive propaganda materials, we explore how the Chinese Communist Party facilitated the re…
Reducing aluminum is the key nutrient management strategy for ameliorating soil acidification and improving root growth in an acidic citrus orchard
Aluminum (Al) toxicity is one of the most serious hazards of soil acidification, which limits root formation and hinders crop growth. Soil acidification in orchards has been widely reported. However, there is little information about the effect of Al 3+ on citrus roots in acidified red soil. Taking pomelo ( Citrus grandis ), the main citrus variety in Southeast China, as an example, soil surveys were conducted to analyze the status and characteri…
Guarding Against the Threat of a Westernising Education: A Comparative Study of Chinese and Saudi Cultural Security Discourses and Practices Towards Overseas Study
Cultural security has become a major watchword in the national security discourses of both the People’s Republic of China and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Within this discourse, overseas study has been imagined as a conduit for cultural and ideological subversion threatening the authority of the prevailing regimes. At the same time, overseas study has been actively encouraged by both the Chinese and Saudi states as an important element in their m…
Propaganda beyond state borders: The deployment of symbolic resources to mobilize political support among the Chinese diaspora
Today, authoritarian states, such as that of China, strive to cultivate political allegiance among their diasporic subjects through state-run propaganda operations beyond national borders. Aiming to construct a stable, exclusive, and institutionalized diasporic network of influence within host societies, autocratic states use extraterritorial propaganda to amass integrative capacity by dispersing carefully tailored discourses, penalizing opposing…
Ruling by Other Means: State-Mobilized Movements
What do states gain by sending citizens into the streets? Ruling by Other Means investigates this question through the lens of State-Mobilized Movements (SMMs), an umbrella concept that includes a range of (often covertly organized) collective actions intended to advance state interests. The SMMs research agenda departs significantly from that of classic social movement and contentious politics theory, focused on threats to the state from seeming…
Soil Phosphorus Pools, Bioavailability and Environmental Risk in Response to the Phosphorus Supply in the Red Soil of Southern China
Excess phosphorus (P) accumulation in the soil can change the bioavailability of P and increase the leaching risks, but the quantitative evaluation of these responses in acidic red soil is lacking. This study aimed to investigate the composition of soil P fractions under different phosphorus apparent balances (PAB) in acidic red soil and the bioavailability and the leaching change-points of different P fractions. Five phosphorus (P) fertilization…
Is the Chinese ‘entrepreneurial welfare state’ an industrial policy in disguise
What has driven China, a developing country that has only recently saved itself from nationwide poverty, to increase its investment in social welfare so rapidly and extensively in the past decade? Drawing on extensive field research in a prefecture-level district in southwest China between 2014 and 2017, the authors argue in this article that local governments in China provide welfare housing programmes as a veil for developmentalist industrial p…
Patrolling Harmony: Pre-emptive authoritarianism and the preservation of stability in W County
Today, with social protests a daily phenomenon in China, the Party-state’s survival hinges upon its institutional capacity to prevent, monitor, process information on, and overcome real and potential challenges. Over the past decade, the Communist Party has consistently stressed the critical importance of ‘stability preservation’ (weiwen) as central to ensuring the longevity of the authoritarian regime. Drawing upon intensive interviews and archi…
Participatory policy making under authoritarianism: The pathways of local budgetary reform in the People’s Republic of China
Citizen participation in policy making is essential in democracies, but there is much less understanding of the process and substance of it in non-democratic states. Taking local budgetary process as an example, this article compares three pathways of participatory reform undertaken by the communist regime in China, namely the representative pathway, the consultative pathway and the transparency pathway. All three are initiated and administered b…
Reforming governance under authoritarianism: Motivations and pathways of local participatory reform in the People’s Republic of China
Many authoritarian regimes use participatory political reform to maintain control over the societies under their rule and survive global waves of democratization. Recent studies of transitional governance have underscored the importance and intricacy of institutional reform; however, no consensus has been reached on an explanation of the dynamism that shapes institutional reforms under non-democratic systems. Why do authoritarian apparatchiks ref…
The Quest for Stability: Policing Popular Protest in the People's Republic of China
Loyal local police forces play an important role in preserving the social and political stability that the Chinese Communist Party needs to maintain its absolute grip on power
Football Game Rather Than Boxing Match: China-US Intensifying Rivalry Does not Amount to Cold War
Shortly after US President Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard sealed the bilateral defense deal in November 2011 under which 2500 US marines will be stationed in Australia came Obama’s announcement on January 5 2012 of the new strategic defense guidance entitled Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for the 21 Century Defence. The document claims that China’s rise might have impact on the US economy and security, and that c…
International Leadership and Norm Evolution
Since the end of the Cold War, fast-paced globalization has increased interaction among states and promoted development of international norms in many fields. Constructivists argue that international interactions can only advance international norms towards a Kantian culture of friendly mutual help and could not propel any regression to a Hobbesian culture of hostile confrontation. We can observe, however, that the reality of international politi…
Regime Inclusion and the Resilience of Authoritarianism: The Local People's Political Consultative Conference in Post-Mao Chinese Politics
The Democratizing Power of Economic Reform: The Revival of a Representative Institution in Rural China
Liberal economic reforms in the post-Maoist era have deprived the grassroots party-state in rural China of its traditional sources of revenue, thereby gradually transforming it from a socialist rentier state into a postcommunist taxation state. The need for taxation by consent to finance the provision of local public goods necessitates the opening of more institutionalized channels of representation and promotes democratic political change at the…
Regime Inclusion and the Resilience of Authoritarianism: The Local People's Political Consultative Conference in Post-Mao Chinese Politics
Participatory policy making under authoritarianism: The pathways of local budgetary reform in the People’s Republic of China
Citizen participation in policy making is essential in democracies, but there is much less understanding of the process and substance of it in non-democratic states. Taking local budgetary process as an example, this article compares three pathways of participatory reform undertaken by the communist regime in China, namely the representative pathway, the consultative pathway and the transparency pathway. All three are initiated and administered b…
International Leadership and Norm Evolution
Since the end of the Cold War, fast-paced globalization has increased interaction among states and promoted development of international norms in many fields. Constructivists argue that international interactions can only advance international norms towards a Kantian culture of friendly mutual help and could not propel any regression to a Hobbesian culture of hostile confrontation. We can observe, however, that the reality of international politi…
Patrolling Harmony: Pre-emptive authoritarianism and the preservation of stability in W County
Today, with social protests a daily phenomenon in China, the Party-state’s survival hinges upon its institutional capacity to prevent, monitor, process information on, and overcome real and potential challenges. Over the past decade, the Communist Party has consistently stressed the critical importance of ‘stability preservation’ (weiwen) as central to ensuring the longevity of the authoritarian regime. Drawing upon intensive interviews and archi…
The Quest for Stability: Policing Popular Protest in the People's Republic of China
Loyal local police forces play an important role in preserving the social and political stability that the Chinese Communist Party needs to maintain its absolute grip on power
Reforming governance under authoritarianism: Motivations and pathways of local participatory reform in the People’s Republic of China
Many authoritarian regimes use participatory political reform to maintain control over the societies under their rule and survive global waves of democratization. Recent studies of transitional governance have underscored the importance and intricacy of institutional reform; however, no consensus has been reached on an explanation of the dynamism that shapes institutional reforms under non-democratic systems. Why do authoritarian apparatchiks ref…
Propaganda beyond state borders: The deployment of symbolic resources to mobilize political support among the Chinese diaspora
Today, authoritarian states, such as that of China, strive to cultivate political allegiance among their diasporic subjects through state-run propaganda operations beyond national borders. Aiming to construct a stable, exclusive, and institutionalized diasporic network of influence within host societies, autocratic states use extraterritorial propaganda to amass integrative capacity by dispersing carefully tailored discourses, penalizing opposing…
Censoring the Intellectual Public Space in China: What Topics Are Not Allowed and Who Gets Blacklisted
Censorship is one of the main forms of political coercion deployed by modern states to control and regulate public expression. In this article, we examine the political censorship of China’s intellectual public space, which has long been underexplored. We apply unsupervised machine learning to examine the database of a leading intellectual portal website, which serves as an archive of both published and censored intellectual writings between 2000…
Football Game Rather Than Boxing Match: China-US Intensifying Rivalry Does not Amount to Cold War
Shortly after US President Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard sealed the bilateral defense deal in November 2011 under which 2500 US marines will be stationed in Australia came Obama’s announcement on January 5 2012 of the new strategic defense guidance entitled Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for the 21 Century Defence. The document claims that China’s rise might have impact on the US economy and security, and that c…
Greasing the wheels of policy reversal: Discursive engineering and public opinion management during the relaxation of China's family planning policy
How do autocratic regimes use political propaganda to facilitate policy reversals of major significance? In this article, we demonstrate how the authoritarian regime in China dynamically uses propaganda to accomplish rapid discursive shifts in the context of major policy changes. Using a structural topic model for unsupervised machine learning to analyze extensive propaganda materials, we explore how the Chinese Communist Party facilitated the re…
The Democratizing Power of Economic Reform: The Revival of a Representative Institution in Rural China
Liberal economic reforms in the post-Maoist era have deprived the grassroots party-state in rural China of its traditional sources of revenue, thereby gradually transforming it from a socialist rentier state into a postcommunist taxation state. The need for taxation by consent to finance the provision of local public goods necessitates the opening of more institutionalized channels of representation and promotes democratic political change at the…
International Leadership and Norm Evolution
Since the end of the Cold War, fast-paced globalization has increased interaction among states and promoted development of international norms in many fields. Constructivists argue that international interactions can only advance international norms towards a Kantian culture of friendly mutual help and could not propel any regression to a Hobbesian culture of hostile confrontation. We can observe, however, that the reality of international politi…
Regime Inclusion and the Resilience of Authoritarianism: The Local People's Political Consultative Conference in Post-Mao Chinese Politics
The Democratizing Power of Economic Reform: The Revival of a Representative Institution in Rural China
Liberal economic reforms in the post-Maoist era have deprived the grassroots party-state in rural China of its traditional sources of revenue, thereby gradually transforming it from a socialist rentier state into a postcommunist taxation state. The need for taxation by consent to finance the provision of local public goods necessitates the opening of more institutionalized channels of representation and promotes democratic political change at the…
Football Game Rather Than Boxing Match: China-US Intensifying Rivalry Does not Amount to Cold War
Shortly after US President Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard sealed the bilateral defense deal in November 2011 under which 2500 US marines will be stationed in Australia came Obama’s announcement on January 5 2012 of the new strategic defense guidance entitled Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for the 21 Century Defence. The document claims that China’s rise might have impact on the US economy and security, and that c…
The Quest for Stability: Policing Popular Protest in the People's Republic of China
Loyal local police forces play an important role in preserving the social and political stability that the Chinese Communist Party needs to maintain its absolute grip on power
Patrolling Harmony: Pre-emptive authoritarianism and the preservation of stability in W County
Today, with social protests a daily phenomenon in China, the Party-state’s survival hinges upon its institutional capacity to prevent, monitor, process information on, and overcome real and potential challenges. Over the past decade, the Communist Party has consistently stressed the critical importance of ‘stability preservation’ (weiwen) as central to ensuring the longevity of the authoritarian regime. Drawing upon intensive interviews and archi…
Participatory policy making under authoritarianism: The pathways of local budgetary reform in the People’s Republic of China
Citizen participation in policy making is essential in democracies, but there is much less understanding of the process and substance of it in non-democratic states. Taking local budgetary process as an example, this article compares three pathways of participatory reform undertaken by the communist regime in China, namely the representative pathway, the consultative pathway and the transparency pathway. All three are initiated and administered b…
Reforming governance under authoritarianism: Motivations and pathways of local participatory reform in the People’s Republic of China
Many authoritarian regimes use participatory political reform to maintain control over the societies under their rule and survive global waves of democratization. Recent studies of transitional governance have underscored the importance and intricacy of institutional reform; however, no consensus has been reached on an explanation of the dynamism that shapes institutional reforms under non-democratic systems. Why do authoritarian apparatchiks ref…
Ruling by Other Means: State-Mobilized Movements
What do states gain by sending citizens into the streets? Ruling by Other Means investigates this question through the lens of State-Mobilized Movements (SMMs), an umbrella concept that includes a range of (often covertly organized) collective actions intended to advance state interests. The SMMs research agenda departs significantly from that of classic social movement and contentious politics theory, focused on threats to the state from seeming…
Soil Phosphorus Pools, Bioavailability and Environmental Risk in Response to the Phosphorus Supply in the Red Soil of Southern China
Excess phosphorus (P) accumulation in the soil can change the bioavailability of P and increase the leaching risks, but the quantitative evaluation of these responses in acidic red soil is lacking. This study aimed to investigate the composition of soil P fractions under different phosphorus apparent balances (PAB) in acidic red soil and the bioavailability and the leaching change-points of different P fractions. Five phosphorus (P) fertilization…
Is the Chinese ‘entrepreneurial welfare state’ an industrial policy in disguise
What has driven China, a developing country that has only recently saved itself from nationwide poverty, to increase its investment in social welfare so rapidly and extensively in the past decade? Drawing on extensive field research in a prefecture-level district in southwest China between 2014 and 2017, the authors argue in this article that local governments in China provide welfare housing programmes as a veil for developmentalist industrial p…
Guarding Against the Threat of a Westernising Education: A Comparative Study of Chinese and Saudi Cultural Security Discourses and Practices Towards Overseas Study
Cultural security has become a major watchword in the national security discourses of both the People’s Republic of China and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Within this discourse, overseas study has been imagined as a conduit for cultural and ideological subversion threatening the authority of the prevailing regimes. At the same time, overseas study has been actively encouraged by both the Chinese and Saudi states as an important element in their m…
Propaganda beyond state borders: The deployment of symbolic resources to mobilize political support among the Chinese diaspora
Today, authoritarian states, such as that of China, strive to cultivate political allegiance among their diasporic subjects through state-run propaganda operations beyond national borders. Aiming to construct a stable, exclusive, and institutionalized diasporic network of influence within host societies, autocratic states use extraterritorial propaganda to amass integrative capacity by dispersing carefully tailored discourses, penalizing opposing…
Reducing aluminum is the key nutrient management strategy for ameliorating soil acidification and improving root growth in an acidic citrus orchard
Aluminum (Al) toxicity is one of the most serious hazards of soil acidification, which limits root formation and hinders crop growth. Soil acidification in orchards has been widely reported. However, there is little information about the effect of Al 3+ on citrus roots in acidified red soil. Taking pomelo ( Citrus grandis ), the main citrus variety in Southeast China, as an example, soil surveys were conducted to analyze the status and characteri…
Politicization as a Policy Instrument: China’s Politicized Policy Narrative of Environmental Protection and Control of Its Social Resonance
Policy politicization is an instrument used by modern states to achieve policy goals. Although politicization can facilitate a policy’s implementation by elevating its priority in the bureaucratic system, it may also create opportunities for the public to question the regime’s legitimacy and to call for broader political reforms. Using empirical evidence from 20 years of official narratives and public intellectual writings on environmental protec…
Censoring the Intellectual Public Space in China: What Topics Are Not Allowed and Who Gets Blacklisted
Censorship is one of the main forms of political coercion deployed by modern states to control and regulate public expression. In this article, we examine the political censorship of China’s intellectual public space, which has long been underexplored. We apply unsupervised machine learning to examine the database of a leading intellectual portal website, which serves as an archive of both published and censored intellectual writings between 2000…
Greasing the wheels of policy reversal: Discursive engineering and public opinion management during the relaxation of China's family planning policy
How do autocratic regimes use political propaganda to facilitate policy reversals of major significance? In this article, we demonstrate how the authoritarian regime in China dynamically uses propaganda to accomplish rapid discursive shifts in the context of major policy changes. Using a structural topic model for unsupervised machine learning to analyze extensive propaganda materials, we explore how the Chinese Communist Party facilitated the re…
The Many Whispers From Yesteryear: How Has China’s History of Centrally Planned Socialism Shaped People’s Divergent Views of Justice Today
In this article, we investigate what factors contribute to the divergence of people’s ideological inclinations in a post-socialist society. To this end, we analyze large-scale survey data from China to examine the relationship between the socialist past and individual ideological inclinations. The findings reveal a strong and direct association between people’s current political orientation and their formative-age lifeworld. Specifically, individ…
Do Culturally Embedded Political Leaders Help or Hinder Economic Development
Previous research presents conflicting views on whether cultural similarities between state officials and the societies they govern promote or hinder economic growth. We posit that cultural embeddedness can facilitate local growth by reducing the transaction costs for alleviating the credible commitment problem, thereby efficiently diminishing the uncertainty for production and investment. Using linguistic similarity as a proxy for cultural embed…
Political science (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · China (11 works) · Political economy (11 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (9 works) · Economics (9 works) · Communism (7 works)