Description

How do governments cultivate loyal citizens? Leading China experts present their latest research on patriotic education in China and ideology.

Panelists’ Bios:

KARRIE J. KOESEL is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame where she specializes in the study of contemporary Chinese and Russian politics, authoritarianism, and religion and politics. She is the author of Religion and Authoritarianism: Cooperation, Conflict and the Consequences (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and co-editor of Citizens & the State in Authoritarian Regimes: Comparing China and Russia (Oxford University Press, 2020). She is currently working on a book manuscript, Learning to Be Loyal: Patriotic Education in Authoritarian Regimes that explores how authoritarian leaders cultivate popular legitimacy and loyalty among young people; how they socialize citizens and the future elite to be patriotic and supportive; and whether these strategies free autocrats from the need to rely so heavily on coercion to stay in power.  

RORY TRUEX is an Assistant Professor in Princeton’s Department of Politics and Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His research focuses on Chinese politics and theories of authoritarian rule. His book Making Autocracy Work: Representation and Responsiveness in Modern China investigates the nature of representation in authoritarian systems, specifically the politics surrounding China’s National People’s Congress (NPC). He argues that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is engineering a system of “representation within bounds” in the NPC, fostering information revelation but silencing political activism. Original data on deputy backgrounds and behaviors is used to explore the nature of representation, policymaking, and incentives in this constrained system. He is currently working on a new set of projects on repression, human rights, and dissent in contemporary China. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, China Quarterly, among other journals.  

YINGYI MA is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Provost Faculty Fellow on internationalization at Syracuse University. In 2019, she was selected as a Public Intellectual Fellow at the National Committee on US-China Relations.  Professor Ma is a sociologist of education and migration. She has published extensively in the areas of education stratification, international student mobility and higher education in China. Her new book, Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese Undergraduates Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education, is published by Columbia University Press in Feb 2020, and has since been featured in various national and international media outlets such as Washington Post and Times Higher Education. She got her PhD in sociology from Johns Hopkins University in 2007.