Working Paper

Political Repression and Nation-building, Submitted

The Best Paper Award, Annual International Symposium on Quantitative History 2021

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Nations are products of modernity, but often rooted in deep history. This paper examines how 17th-century Manchu repression of Han Chinese shaped 20th-century nation-building in China, as revolutionaries reframed repression as ethnic conflict through modern newspapers. Applying machine learning to 300,000 articles, I show that prefectures with histories of repression produced more nationalist revolutionaries in response to anti-Manchu propaganda. Using historical political cycles as an instrument, I confirm the causal link. The transmission operated through cultural channels that preserved historical memory. These findings reveal how historical narratives, activated by media, influenced political identity and nation-building.

The Economics of Mobilizing Free-riders: Evidence from the Chinese Civil War 1945-1949, Submitted

NSF Dissertation Grant # 2214884

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Redistribution can facilitate military mobilization, but it may also intensify free-riding. During the Chinese Civil War, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a radical land reform that transferred land from landlords to peasants. Drawing on death records of over 566,162 CCP soldiers, I find that land reform increased military participation on the extensive margin. However, the intensive margin declined when redistribution was larger, indicating heightened free-riding. Importantly, both margins were positive only in counties near Kuomintang (KMT) forces, where the threat of landlord reprisals was high. These findings suggest that violent class struggle strategically reshaped the costs of non-participation to mobilize peasants for war.

Publication

2024  Wrongful Convictions with Chinese Characteristics. Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, 32(1), 143–163. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.12384 . with Li, Wei .

2023 The Sin of Words: Censorship and self-censorship in China during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Asia-Pacific Economic History Review, 63 (2), 145–165. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/aehr.12268.

Selected Work in Progress

After Nixon’s China Visit: The Arrival of New Technology and Economic Development in Pre-reform China, with Kang Zhou  (Draft Coming Soon)

Property over Loyalty, with Ke Rong, Zhihao Xu, Sicheng Zhao. (Draft Coming Soon)