Publications

"Connecting the Countryside via E-Commerce: Evidence from China," with Victor Couture, Benjamin Faber, and Yizhen Gu, American Economic Review: Insights 2021, 3(1): 35–50.
"The Rise of Data Politics: Digital China and the World", Studies in Comparative International Development, March 2021.
  • [PDF][Article Link (Open Access)]
  • Featured in South China Morning Post, Jiemian News, The Paper (澎湃新闻), The China Project (SupChina), CSIS Pekingology
  • Abstract: Data has become one of the most valuable assets for governments and firms. Yet, we still have a limited understanding of how data reshapes international economic relations. This paper explores various aspects of data politics through the lens of China’s digital rise and the country’s global engagement. I start with the theoretical premise that data differs from traditional strategic assets (e.g., land, oil, and labor), in that it is nonrival and partially excludable. These characteristics have generated externality, commitment, and valuation problems, triggering three fundamental changes in China’s external economic relations. First, data’s externality problem makes it necessary for states to regulate data or even to pursue data sovereignty. However, clashes over data sovereignty can ignite conflicts between China and other countries. Second, the commitment problem in data use raises global concerns about foreign government surveillance. As data is easier to transfer across borders than physical commodities, Chinese tech companies’ investments abroad are vulnerable to national security investigations by foreign regulators. Chinese tech companies, therefore, confront a “deep versus broad” dilemma: deep ties with the Chinese government help promote their domestic business but jeopardize their international expansion. Lastly, data’s valuation problem makes traditional measures (e.g., GDP) ill-suited to measure the relative strengths of the world’s economies, which may distort perceptions of China and other states.
  • Keywords: China, Data, Politics of Technology, Privacy, Surveillance

"Taobao, Federalism, and the Emergence of Law, Chinese Style," with Barry R. Weingast, Minnesota Law Review, 2018, Vol. 102, No.4​
  • ​[Abstract][PDF]
  • Reprinted in Anupam Chandler and Haochen Sun eds., Digital Sovereignty. (Oxford University Press, 2023).
  • All developing countries face the problem of how to build the legal and institutional infrastructure (for example, securing property rights and the rule of law) necessary to support efficient markets. The historic path for the West involved parliaments and independent judiciaries that constrained the ruler. China’s path has differed considerably; from the beginning, it involved “federalism, Chinese style.”
              This Article explains how private actors are devising new institutional rules in China that hold the promise of creating what we call “law, Chinese style.” Taobao—China’s dominant online trading platform with over four hundred million users—is not simply an exchange platform, but one in the process of developing a modern legal system that enforces contracts, resolves disputes, and prevents fraud. We argue that the delegation implicit in law, Chinese style, parallels China’s earlier reforms during the 1980s and early 1990s that helped create federalism, Chinese style. In parallel with the earlier delegation, the new form of delegation also involves the delegation of authority and policy experimentation. Importantly, this approach to legal development is much less politically constraining on the central government than the Western approach.
  •            Additionally, the emergence of Taobao’s national market has important political and economic effects, especially with respect to federalism. From the beginning of the reform process, the Chinese common market has been hindered by internal trade barriers. Taobao’s national market holds the potential to circumvent internal trade barriers and grant tens of millions of rural people access to markets previously beyond their grasp.
               As Taobao becomes larger in user base, it gains more political clout with the central government—and it is more likely to raise suspicions from the government as well. It remains to be seen, therefore, whether, and to what extent, Taobao and the central government will be able to continue their collaboration as circumstances change.
    ​​​

Working Papers

"Law, Chinese Style: Solving the Authoritarian’s Legal Dilemma through the Private Provision of Law," ​with ​Barry R. Weingast
  • [PDF]
  • ​Abstract: ​How do authoritarian states build the legal infrastructure of private law (e.g., property rights, contract enforcement) necessary to support efficient markets? Authoritarians typically undersupply this infrastructure due to an “authoritarian’s legal dilemma”: how to create a judiciary that would supply and only supply private law. If a judiciary is sufficiently strong and independent to support private law, it cannot credibly commit not to constrain the autocrat by strengthening public law (e.g., citizen rights, constitution). We argue that China has devised a novel solution to this dilemma: partially outsourcing the provision of private law to key private actors. In China’s 700-million-user e-commerce market, online trading platforms (e.g., Taobao) have privately supplied strong legal infrastructure to enforce contracts, prevent fraud, and settle disputes. Such platforms both enforce and create private law through rule experimentation. This digital route to legal development is politically viable and potentially generalizable to other states.
  • Key Words: Rule of Law; Authoritarianism; China; Politics of Technology; E-Commerce.
 "Regulatory Protection and the Concentration of Trade: Evidence from Chinese Customs Data," with Robert Gulotty, Xiaojun Li, and Wei Lin
  • [PDF]
  • Abstract: To comply with the demands of increasingly regulated markets, firms today must label, package or even rework products to meet the high standards of the destination market. These technical barriers to trade (TBT) can raise prices and perhaps quality, but firms may also respond by moving out of the market entirely or rerouting their trade through third countries. In the former case, top firms enjoy monopolistic rents. In the latter case, firms seeking to meet a standard in a country may shift transit trade toward countries with similar regulatory levels as the destination market. The consequences could be dire for smaller exporters and developing markets that have enjoyed at least some of the rents associated with transit trade. To study these effects, we examine the effects of regulatory protection on the flow of China’s exports between 2000-2007, drawing on a unique dataset that covers the universe of over 130 million customs transactions reported by Chinese firms at the level of the shipment, including price, quantity, and the country of transit prior to arrival at the final market. During this period, China’s exports quadrupled and its trading partners adopted hundreds of regulatory barriers to trade. Joining the customs data with the catalogue of regulatory barriers collected by the World Trade Organization, we examine the consequences of these regulatory barriers for the margins of trade, both across firms and across transit countries, and, for the first time, map the geography of trade for the largest exporter in a world of regulated markets.
  • Key Words: Regulatory barriers to trade, international trade, customs data
"A China Shock or a Multinational Shock?: The Role of MNC Value Chains in the Trade Shock​," with Dennis P. Quinn

"Turning the Blade Inward: Deregulation to Discipline the Bureaucracy," with Reed Lei

"Playing Catch-up: How Authoritarian Courts Handle Transnational IP Litigation," with Jian Xu

"Firms under Fire: Market Liberalization, Commercial Interests and China's Economic Statecraft toward North Korea," with Robert Gulotty, Xiaojun Li, and Wei Lin

Work in Progresss

"Opium for the Masses? Field Experimental Evidence on How Consumption Shapes Political Beliefs," data analysis
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Other Publications 

​Op-ed, Financial Times, “E-commerce Can Ease Social Ills in China’s Villages,” with Wesley Koo (Stanford),
  • Original FT Article [Link]
  • Translation in Chinese by FTchinese [Link]

Op-ed, Jiemian News (界面新闻), "特朗普卸任，但关于政治极化和平台审查的争论还远未结束," with Xibai Xu [Link]
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Article translated into Chinese, The Paper (澎湃新闻), “数据政治缘何兴起，影响几何,” in Chinese [Link] 
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Op-ed, The Paper (澎湃新闻), “Observations from Taobao (e-Commerce) Villages,” in Chinese [Link] ​​

​Book Chapter, “Junpu: The E-Commerce Village,” with Yi Wang (SWUFE), in China's Taobao Villages. Beijing, China: Electronic Industry Press, 2015, in Chinese, translated into English and released in India and the UK​